IRINI mission for a French Atlantique

The French Navy Atlantique 2 is one of the assets of IRINI Operation.

This morning we’re tracking a Atlantique 2 (reg. 27 – callsign FNY5624) in flight over Tyrrhenian Sea northbound. The aircraft probably is returning to France after a patrol mission over central Mediterranean Sea.

The French Atlantique operates directly from its base in Lorient, in Brittany, as did the German P-3 Orion which operated from its base in northern Germany.

In this way, most of the time of the mission is used for the transfer flight and not to fly over the area of operations.

We do not know why the aircraft is not based, for example, in Sigonella