LIB - Air Liberte / Air Lib (1987 - 2003)

Just been doing a bit of snooping regarding those 2 737-300’s they operated and it appears to have been the 2 TAT operated prior to the airline being merged into Air Liberte in 1997 so it likely would have worn this livery, however, there is no visible indicator to point to them being Air Liberte aircraft so a good shout to leave them off.

It’s also likely that the ex-AOM A340-300’s were never repainted as Air Lib wasn’t exactly stable with parent Swissair collapsing in late 2001 so repainting was likely ignored. There are photos of F-GTUA in 2003 still wearing the AOM Qualiflyer livery and GTUB in late 2002 the same.

The airline was part of BA’s failed attempt a establishing European feeder airlines, who as you said would have operated into LHR on behalf of British Airways. I believe the Air Liberte brand was bought up by BA who wanted to expand their French ops as TAT’s fleet just wasn’t big enough so the airlines were merged so that you could fly with BA from LHR or another UK airport like LGW or MAN, to Paris Orly and then onwards with Air Liberte into the Med and around France. The problem was that BA wasn’t able to turn around Air Liberte’s profitability and this led to the selling of the airline in 2000 to Swissair who merged it with AOM on 2001. If BA had just stuck it out with TAT, which was profitable, we might have seen a different outcome but alas.

Another MD-83 livery, appears F-GPZA wore the Pyramid de Louvre livery too,

And they also operate TAT’s fleet of F28-2000’s in a couple of half painted liveries in the late 1990s,

It is cool to think that Air Liberte Tunisie after it was sold in 1996, became Nouvelair which ofc still flies today and which operates under the same IATA and ICAO codes of the former Air Liberte so a piece of Air Liberte still flies today, if just in codes.

Great suggestion :smiley:

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