At offices in the emirate’s airport free zone, where Russian and eastern European cargo aircraft operators once managed bustling transportation networks that crisscrossed the globe, business is a shadow of its former self. The slump has been brought on by the ban on the Antonov An-12, the workhorse of the companies’ transport operations. The ageing, four-engine turboprop aircraft was banned from UAE airspace by federal aviation authorities on March 1 following a series of accidents, one of which killed seven people, and a government inspection of operations in Ukraine. Sharjah had become the Ukrainian-made plane’s regional logistics and maintenance hub, but the ban has effectively brought that two-decade era to an end. Read the story here.