Morocco-Spain Flight Confusion Sparks Debate Over Migrant Repatriation

The military aircraft C-130H-LM Hercules of the Royal Moroccan Air Force took off from Casablanca, entered Spanish airspace and flew over the Canary Islands until landing at Gran Canaria airport on several occasions, as indicated by the Flightradar24 website, an air information page.

The flights carried out by this mythical Hercules military aircraft are actually recorded by the Aena agency as commercial flights of the national Moroccan airline, Royal Air Maroc. Hence the controversy. Are these military flights in the guise of civilian flights or civilian flights in the guise of military flights?

The Gran Canaria airport, consulted by El Closure Digital, answers the question. It totally denies the presence of the Hercules military aircraft in the airspace of the Canary Islands and affirms that "this confusion between planes is due to an error in the registration of the plane from Morocco, the registration of the military aircraft having been wrongly attributed to the regular plane of Royal Air Moroc".

In 2019, Morocco received, as part of the US military assistance program, two Hercules C-130H aircraft for its fleet, which has a total of 15 Hercules aircraft. This is a transport aircraft used by many armed forces in the world for military, civilian and humanitarian operations.