Heston Airlines

You are standing at the fence in summer, the tracker shows a Condor flight – and then a plain A320 with a Lithuanian registration rolls in. Chances are you have just caught Heston Airlines in your lens. The airline from Vilnius is one of the younger wet-lease providers in the Baltics and flies almost exclusively on behalf of others. Here you will learn how to reliably identify Heston jets, what the Maltese registrations are about and why the airline once had former Aeroflot A330s in its fleet.

Heston Airlines at a glance

Heston Airlines is a Lithuanian ACMI and charter airline based in Vilnius. According to reference sources, the company itself was founded as early as 2016, but things only really got going during the pandemic: in October 2020, the trade press reported that the leasing and maintenance group Heston Aviation was setting up an airline of its own. A partner of the group justified this at the time with a market opportunity – precisely in the crisis, an airline could be started without the legacy burdens of established companies.

In May 2021, Heston received its Air Operator Certificate, and flight operations began in summer 2021 with two A320s. In summer 2026, the airline thus celebrated its fifth anniversary. It is run by Jonas Rinkauskas, who previously worked in management at GetJet Airlines – another Lithuanian wet-lease provider.

The business model differs fundamentally from a scheduled airline. Heston hardly sells tickets of its own and has no scheduled network. Instead, the airline provides aircraft with crew, maintenance and insurance to other airlines and tour operators, in short ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, Insurance). Added to that are complete seasonal charters and short-notice ad hoc flights. How the principle works is explained in the article Wet lease explained; the difference between charter and scheduled service is covered in Charter flights vs. scheduled flights.

Lithuania as a wet-lease hub

Heston is not an isolated case. Vilnius has developed into one of the most important locations for wet-lease airlines in Europe. Alongside Heston, Avion Express and GetJet Airlines are based there, and the former national airline flyLAL was also at home here. In neighboring Latvia, SmartLynx Airlines flew on a similar model until November 2025.

For you as a spotter, this has a clear consequence: an A320 with a LY- registration and a customer flight number is by no means automatically a Heston jet. The fleets of the Lithuanian providers are very similar, and all of them fly for changing customers in summer. Only the registration and ICAO code make the assignment reliable. The home base is at Vilnius Airport, where with a little luck you see several of these companies in one day.

Codes, callsign and registrations

• IATA code HN: appears only when Heston flies under its own flight number – rare on wet lease.
• ICAO code HST: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on many trackers as the operator.
• Callsign HESTON: how the crew identifies itself on the radio.

For an ACMI airline, the flight number is a poor guide. When Heston flies for Condor, the departure board shows a DE flight number. Depending on the contract and tracker, you then see either the customer’s flight number or the HST callsign. Why that is so is explained in the article Callsign and flight number; the basics of the codes are in IATA and ICAO codes explained.

Feature	Heston Airlines	Valletta Airlines (sister)
Country	Lithuania	Malta
ICAO code	HST	per reference sources HOT
Callsign	HESTON	per reference sources SUNNY SKY
Registration prefix	LY-	9H-
Aircraft type	Airbus A320	Airbus A320

The Maltese side: 9H- registrations and Valletta Airlines

Heston’s fleet page lists not only Lithuanian registrations. Part of the A320s carries the Maltese prefix 9H-. According to reference sources, the background is the sister company Valletta Airlines, which Heston announced in November 2022 for Malta Airport. The Maltese operating license reportedly followed in February 2023, and A330-200s were originally planned there as well.

Malta is popular as a country of registration with leasing and wet-lease companies – you know this from Malta Air or Lauda Europe in the Ryanair group. Why so many aircraft are registered there is explained in the article Offshore registrations and leasing. Which company actually operated a 9H- jet at the time of your photo is shown most reliably by the ICAO code in the tracker.

The fleet: pure first-generation A320s

The fleet is designed for quick deployment with changing customers and is therefore uniform. According to its own fleet page (as of October 2026), Heston operates 13 Airbus A320s, split between Lithuanian and Maltese registrations. Reference sources sometimes give differing numbers because aircraft move between companies, customers and maintenance phases – but the order of magnitude is a good dozen aircraft.

Type	Status	Seats	Spotter note
Airbus A320-200	active, about a dozen aircraft	mostly 180 in one class, a few with 12 business and 144 economy	Build years from around 2003, partly IAE V2500, partly CFM56
Airbus A330-200	historic (from 2021)	two aircraft without seats, one with a cabin	Former Aeroflot jets, leased from Avolon
Airbus A321	per reference sources used earlier	–	No current aircraft on the fleet page

The Airbus A320 is the backbone. These are first-generation (ceo) aircraft, not A320neos – you recognize the neo by its much larger engines. How to tell the two apart cleanly is shown in the article A320neo or ceo?. The manufacturer is Airbus.

Interesting for close observers: the Heston fleet contains two engine families. Part of the A320s flies with IAE V2527-A5s, others with CFM56-5Bs from CFM International. From the outside, you tell them apart by the nacelle: the V2500 has a longer, slimmer cowling reaching back behind the fan, while the CFM56-5B looks shorter and rounder. Sharklets, too, are found on only part of the fleet; details are in the article Winglets, sharklets and more.

The A330 episode of 2021

For spotters, one chapter from the first year of operations is especially interesting. In August 2021, the trade press reported that Heston was taking over three Airbus A330-200s from the lessor Avolon. The roughly twelve-year-old aircraft came from the fleet of Aeroflot, which had retired them in spring 2021. Maintenance and conversion took place in Hong Kong at the time.

The intended use was unusual: two of the three A330s were meant as makeshift freighters, that is, with the passenger seats removed to carry cargo in the cabin. Such solutions were in demand during the pandemic because, with the collapse in passenger traffic, the cargo capacity in the bellies of scheduled jets was also missing. The third A330 kept a normal cabin for passenger charter.

Important for context: these makeshift freighters are not true conversions like the A330-200P2F or A330-300P2F. They keep their windows and passenger doors and have no large cargo door. From the outside, they look like a normal A330-200. No A330 appears on Heston’s current fleet page anymore – photos from that time are historical documents today.

Customers and assignments

Who is booking Heston at any given time often changes from season to season. For summer 2026, the airline itself reported an assignment for Condor with two aircraft and several destinations – and not for the first time. Reference sources also list longer-term contracts with Marabu Airlines, Azerbaijan Airlines and Uzbekistan Airways as well as assignments for airlines in Africa and the Caribbean. These details are snapshots; before a targeted trip, check where the aircraft are currently operating.

In addition, Heston flies charters of its own: complete seasonal programs for tour operators, ad hoc flights and special projects. By its own account, the A320 can also be used for cargo. And in 2026, Heston presented itself as a partner of the Lithuanian national basketball team on the road to the 2027 FIBA World Cup – sports charters are a classic field for airlines like this.

How to recognize Heston jets

Do not expect a uniform livery like Ryanair’s. Depending on the contract, Heston A320s fly in a plain, largely neutral livery, with the customer’s name on the fuselage or with remnants of a previous owner’s colors. The article Recognizing hybrid liveries describes such mixed forms. Because the look is so changeable, these features are more reliable:

1. Registration: LY- or 9H- on a first-generation A320 is a strong hint.
2. Tracker data: HST or “HESTON” as the operator, even though the flight number belongs to another airline.
3. Engines: V2500 or CFM56 – does it match the aircraft on Heston’s fleet list?
4. Season: Heston is mainly active in central Europe in summer.

The basics on country prefixes are in Understanding aircraft registrations.

Spotting Heston in Germany

In Germany, you are most likely to see Heston at airports with many vacation flights, when German airlines buy wet-lease capacity in summer. On Condor assignments, these are mainly departure airports like Frankfurt Airport or Düsseldorf Airport – which airport is affected in a given season depends on the respective contract, though. There are no fixed Heston routes.

So plan with the tracker rather than the schedule: an alert on the callsign or on individual registrations is far more reliable for wet-lease airlines than searching for flight numbers. How to read the data correctly is explained in the guide on flight tracking for spotters.

Common mix-ups

• Equating the customer’s flight number with the operator – on wet lease, Heston flies under other airlines’ flight numbers; the ICAO code HST shows the real operator.
• Taking every LY- A320 for Heston – Avion Express and GetJet fly similar fleets out of Vilnius.
• Automatically assigning 9H- registrations to the Ryanair group – Heston, or Valletta Airlines, also registers A320s in Malta.
• Logging Heston A320s as A320neos – the fleet consists of first-generation aircraft with smaller engines.
• Taking the 2021 A330s for P2F freighters – they were makeshift freighters with windows and no large cargo door.
• Confusing Heston with flyLAL – flyLAL was Lithuania’s former scheduled airline and has been history since 2009.

Conclusion

Heston Airlines is one of the younger wet-lease airlines from Lithuania: launched in 2021 in the middle of the pandemic, today operating a good dozen A320s on behalf of other airlines. The jets are interesting for spotters because they turn up in unexpected places and under other airlines’ flight numbers – and because the fleet, with Lithuanian and Maltese registrations, two engine families and the short A330 episode, has more history than its plain paint suggests. If you note down the registration and callsign too, you can assign every sighting reliably.