TZ-ABY  Ilyushin IL-18                                             (c/n  182004505)

                               

                                    Grainy shot from the Rodney Brown collection of an IL-18 of Air Mali at Paris Le Bourget, in
                                    1964.   Like many of the emerging TPACs of the 1960s, the markedly socialistic government
                                    of Mali had close ties to the Soviet Union and most of the early equipment of its national airline
                                    was Russian.  What is odd, however, is that Mali was allocated TZ, rather than one of the number
                                    + letter combos which ICAO were keen to assign to recently independent countries.  I have never
                                    been able to track down the bloke who assigned these country codes.   Somebody had to make the
                                   decision somewhere along the line.  Air Mali operated four IL-8s and TZ-ABY flew with the airline
                                    from 1969 to 1972.