Heston Airlines

Is Heston Airlines safe?

On its record so far, yes. Heston Airlines has not had an accident since it began flying in June 2021, it holds an EU operating certificate from Lithuania, and as an IATA member it has passed the IATA Operational Safety AuditIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary. We score it 80. What keeps it out of the top group is that five years is a short record, its jets are all second-hand, and its business sends crews to places most EU airlines avoid.

You will rarely buy a ticket from Heston. It is a wet-lease company: airlines rent its Airbus A320s with Heston pilots, cabin crew, maintenance and insurance, and sell the seats under their own names. If your booking says "operated by Heston Airlines", this page is the record that applies to your flight.

Who does Heston fly for?

Heston belongs to the Heston Aviation Group, a Vilnius company that also leases, trades and maintains aircraft. Its first commercial flight went from Kaunas to Ljubljana on 30 June 2021. By June 2026 it had about 650 staff and 16 A320-family jets, and it plans up to 30 by 2031.

Its client list changes each season. Condor has used Heston A320s for five summers; in 2026 two of them flew from Münster/Osnabrück and Hamburg to Palma, the Canary Islands, Hurghada and Jerez. Air Montenegro wet-leased a Heston A320 for summer 2023, mostly on routes to Copenhagen, Lyon and Nantes. A Heston jet was flying for Tunisair in 2022, and in April 2023 Uzbekistan Airways wet-leased a 13-year-old Heston A330-200 for routes to Istanbul, Dubai and Jeddah (Simple Flying). FlightGlobal reported in June 2024 that Heston was leaving widebody flying. Heston also flies holiday charters for Baltic tour operators from Vilnius and Tallinn.

The most unusual contract came after the fall of the Assad government. The US and the EU began lifting sanctions on Syria in 2025, and Air Data News says Syrian Air first relied on a Heston A320 to resume flights to the EU. In July 2026 it flew Damascus to Amsterdam for the first time in 14 years, three times a week with an A320 wet-leased from Heston (Simple Flying). In August 2026 Heston sold two of its A320s to Syrian Air.

What is on Heston's record?

Very little. The Aviation Safety Network lists no accident for Heston, and AeroInside lists one incident. On 29 July 2022 an A320 flying Tunisair flight TU902 from Tunis to Marseille stopped its climb at 3,000 feet with a hydraulic leak and returned to Tunis, where it landed safely.

A quiet record from a young airline is good news, but it needs a caveat. Lithuania's accident investigators publish few reports, and Heston's crews work for a different airline in a different country almost every season. Several more years at this size would make the record mean more. Compare Marathon Airlines, a Greek wet-lease company of similar age, which wrote off a jet at Belgrade in 2024 after a crew took off from the wrong runway intersection.

Who oversees it?

Heston's certificate comes from Lithuania's civil aviation authority, which applies the same EASA rules as the rest of the EU. The FAA moved Lithuania into its Category 1FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary in 2024. Heston appears on IATA's member list, and membership requires IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary. We score oversight 90, the level we give EU airlines with IOSA.

One detail on the fleet page looks odd: several of the A320s carry Maltese registrations starting with 9H. Live flight tracking in October 2026 showed one of them, 9H-NZL, flying with Heston's own call sign, so these aircraft are part of the Heston operation, not a separate airline.

How old are its planes?

Heston lists 13 Airbus A320s on its website. It does not publish their ages, and all of them came second-hand. The two it sold to Syrian Air in August 2026 were built in 2009 and 2012, which gives a fair idea of the rest: well-proven jets in the middle of their working lives, with fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary controls but not the newer, more efficient A320neo engines. See our A320 family page for the type's record.

Before you fly Heston

• Read the "operated by" line. Booking changes and compensation go through the airline that sold the ticket, but Heston's crew flies you.
• Check advice for the destination, not just the airline. If your Heston flight goes to Damascus or anywhere in the Middle East, read the current EASA conflict-zone bulletins and your government's travel advice.
• Expect the crew to know the aircraft better than the route. Wet-lease crews change networks each season; that is normal, and the procedures and audits that keep it safe are the same EU ones.

How we scored it

Oversight (90) is EU-level with IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary, and the accident record (86) is clean but short. The second-hand A320 fleet (62) and a network that reaches Syria and other conflict areas (62) cost the most. Incidents score 80 because the one known event was handled routinely and the public record is thin.