- Bermuda suspended the airworthiness certifications of 740 Russian jets on the island.
- It's part of the UK's effort to enforce British sanctions in the country's overseas territories.
- Legally, it means the planes can't fly — but flight trackers showed jets in the air after deadline.
Bermuda temporarily suspended all Russian jets on the island from its airworthiness system on Saturday. While this legally prohibits the aircrafts from flying, dozens of delisted planes were still active the next day, according to the flight-tracking site FlightRadar24.
There are 740 Russian-operated planes registered in Bermuda, Bernews first reported. Around 50 were spotted flying over Russia and Kazakhstan as of 11:50 a.m. Sunday, per a Flightradar24 screenshot shared on Twitter.
The Bermuda Civil Aviation Authority announced Saturday that international sanctions on the aviation sector made it impossible to "confidently approve" Russian aircrafts as airworthy.
"Therefore, as of 23:59 UTC on March 12th 2022, the BCAA has provisionally suspended all Certificates of Airworthiness of those aircraft operating under the Article 83bis Agreement between Bermuda and the Russian Federation," the BCAA said in a statement. BCAA did not immediately respond to Insider's request for additional comment.
—Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) March 13, 2022
The mass delisting is part of the UK's effort to enforce in overseas territories such as Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands the British sanctions placed against Russia following the country's invasion of Ukraine.
UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss previously told Parliament that the government is "working closely with the overseas territories to make sure that Putin's oligarchs have nowhere to hide." However, repossessing planes leased to Russian airlines has proven a legal nightmare, aviation advisors told Reuters.
