USC comes for Corendon
The first interesting visitor of 2026 arrived on January 6th.
KLM, TUI and Corendon airlines had cancelled flights between Amsterdam and Curaçao following the American raid in Venezuela on January 2nd. Adding to the chaos were several days of poor weather that significantly derailed operations at Schiphol airport. With so many travellers stranded in Amsterdam and Curaçao, extra flights would be needed to accommodate everyone.
Corendon’s flights to the island are operated by Spanish ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, Insurance) carrier World2Fly. With only 1 Airbus A350 leased to Corendon, a suitable aircraft would have to be obtained elsewhere.
This brought us D-AUSC, a 21-year-old Airbus A340-313 operated by German company Universal Sky Carrier (USC). The airline specializes in charter and ACMI operations using a fleet of A340-300 and -600 airliners. This flight departed Frankfurt Hahn (HHN/EDFH) and flew overnight as flight CD599P, arriving in Curaçao at 931am. The wide-body airliner flew to Amsterdam late that same day.
D-AUSC was previously operated by South African Airways in 2005 (as ZS-SXE), Jet Airways in 2005 (as VT-JWB), South African Airways again in 2007 (eventually stored from March-August 2020) and finally to USC.
(Click an image to enlarge)
© 2026 Patrick Lalande. All rights reserved.
