UK man starts looking into North Korea's airline and realizes it doesn't make sense at all
Published on Feb 14, 2026 at 12:12 PM (UTC+4)
by Daisy Edwards
Last updated on Feb 12, 2026 at 5:48 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Ben Thompson
A man from the UK decided to start looking into North Korea’s airline, and it was mind-blowing how much it didn’t make sense at all.
Air Koryo belongs to the most sanctioned country on Earth, yet it still lands in Beijing with paying passengers on board.
Dig a little deeper, and the whole operation starts to feel like it is running on vibes, paperwork, and sheer stubbornness.
What looks like a political oddity is really an engineering puzzle with an end in sight.
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North Korea’s airline runs on a system that disappeared
The UK YouTuber began his descent down the rabbit hole by examining the airplanes themselves.
Air Koryo is still flying Soviet era aircraft that were built before modern aviation standards, including an Ilyushin IL-18 that first rolled off a production line in 1969.
Under normal circumstances, aircraft like that stay safe because they sit inside a huge support network: certified parts, approved overhaul facilities, consistent fuel standards, and recurrent pilot training.
That support system once existed for Air Koryo and during the Cold War, North Korea’s aviation was plugged into the wider Soviet ecosystem.
When something wore out, it could be replaced through the same pipelines that kept Aeroflot and other Soviet aligned carriers operating.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, that pipeline slowly dried up, turning maintenance into a scramble.
Then sanctions tightened further and it became illegal for many outside companies to help keep the fleet flying, and even insurance safety nets were squeezed.
On paper, the airline still needs airworthiness certificates signed off by North Korea’s civil aviation authorities and in reality, the certified supply chain those signatures assume is basically gone.
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Air Koryo keeps flying by cannibalizing aircraft
With legitimate parts hard to source, the airline reportedly survives by stripping one aircraft to keep another alive.
Retired airframes become donors for instruments, hydraulics, wiring, and anything salvageable.
For smaller parts that wear out fast, like seals and gaskets, the workaround is domestic manufacturing and reverse engineering, with no original equipment certification and no reliable way to know if a locally made replacement will behave the same under stress.
Another detail makes the situation feel even stranger: Air Koryo’s pilots are military officers, not civilian employees weighing risk and liability.
Decisions to keep flying old aircraft are not made in the cockpit – they are made higher up.
Meanwhile, the route map has shrunk to a handful of destinations, yet China still allows flights to land in Beijing multiple times a week.
The UK man’s conclusion is simple: North Korea’s airline should not work the way a normal airline works.
It keeps going anyway, held up by improvisation, paperwork, and the tolerance of neighbors willing to look the other way.
Just don’t look too closely.
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As a Content Writer since January 2025, Daisy’s focus is on writing stories on topics spanning the entirety of the website. As well as writing about EVs, the history of cars, tech, and celebrities, Daisy is always the first to pitch the seed of an idea to the audience editor team, who collab with her to transform it into a fully informative and engaging story.
