For around 20 years, a fascinating claim has circulated about The Starship, the plane Led Zeppelin rented for its 1973 and 1975 US tours.

It has been reported in books and magazines since at least 2007 that a mysterious foreign government rented the plane in early 1979, painting the side of the plane with the titles “Republique Populaire Revolutionnaire Linee” where it was spotted at Heathrow airport in the UK in February 1979.

Some aviation fans have even speculated that just four years after Led Zeppelin used The Starship, the plane was covertly being used by the Iranian government.

As part of our investigation into the history of The Starship, LedZepNews decided to look into this rumour. Could it be true that a government rented the plane used by Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Bob Dylan and others? And if so, was that government Iran in the weeks following the Iranian revolution? 

The first thing we did was consider whether the rumour made sense. There are a few different claims here: That The Starship was refitted for private jet flights at the time, that the plane was at Heathrow in February 1979, that the plane was painted with the mysterious titles and finally that Iran may have been the client.

We know that after it was used by rockstars for tours, with Peter Frampton the final music client in 1976, the plane was left unused for two years.

By 1978, The Starship had been repainted white and red, removing the stars and stripes design, and was being leased by Private Jet Services. The company, legally known as PrivAir, was founded as Petrolair in 1977. The company operated private flights on The Starship, so it would make sense that the business rented it out to a government customer.

But what about the plane being at Heathrow in February 1979? This also makes sense. Thankfully, planespotters were diligently tracking the plane for years. A photo on Flickr shows it at Heathrow on January 7, 1979.

The April 1979 issue of Air Yorkshire lists the plane as being spotted at Luton airport in the UK on March 30, 1979. So we know The Starship was in the UK around this time, making the plane’s presence at Heathrow in February 1979 very possible.

The titles said to be painted on the plane, “Republique Populaire Revolutionnaire Linee”, are more difficult to check. They’re written in French, but don’t seem to make sense. A Google search for that phrase turns up no results. If Iran had been using it, we would expect to see evidence of it.

And why would Iran be using French for an official plane? The country dropped it as an official language in the 1950s, so it would be more likely the plane would have English or Arabic titles, not French ones.

The most tricky question to answer is whether Iran was the client. It’s possible that Private Jet Services, thanks to its links to the oil industry, could have been working with Iran.

To answer that question, we decided to ask some organisation that may know. We started off by sending a Freedom of Information request to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the UK, which oversees planes in the country. If Iran had rented a plane that was stored at Heathrow, there’s a chance it may have files on it.

A few weeks went past and the CAA replied to our request to say “the CAA holds no information” on Iran hiring The Starship.

We also tried contacting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the US equivalent of the CAA, to see if it had any files. After all, The Starship was owned by the US airline AeroAmerica at the time. The FAA still hasn’t replied to our request.

Next, we turned to the National Archives in the US. It has a good online database of its files, even if many of the documents require on-site visits to access. Intriguingly, the collection contains State Department files about AeroAmerica, the plane’s owner, originating from Germany in 1979 that are partially restricted due to national security reasons. 

This seemed promising, but a look at other related files show that many of these State Department records remain partially restricted due to national security.

Perhaps the national security route may be helpful, though. It would make sense that US intelligence agencies might have been interested in Iran renting an American plane. We sent a Freedom of Information request to the CIA asking if it had files on Iran renting The Starship.

Weeks passed and then we had this letter in the post from the CIA:

The agency refused to even confirm if it had files on this or not, leaving us none the wiser. Interestingly, this letter is known as a Glomar response and has been used by organisations like the CIA for decades.

LedZepNews had contacted organisations in the UK and US and had no leads suggesting the Iran rumour was right or wrong. We tried emailing the Iranian government through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but had no response beyond an automated reply.

It was time to go back to the drawing board. Perhaps researching sightings of the plane at Heathrow around this period might give us more clues on who was renting The Starship?

We broadened our search to cover The Starship at Heathrow throughout the 1970s in the hope of finding more information about the plane’s movements. That’s when we struck gold.

Held in the collections of the NA3T Archive of Transport, Travel and Trade was this undated black and white photo of The Starship at Heathrow. All we knew was that it was taken by Brian Stainer at Heathrow airport in the 1970s.

Zoom in on the side of the plane and it’s possible to read the titles written on it. At first glance, they seem to be the “Republique Populaire Revolutionnaire Linee” that we are looking for, seemingly confirming that this photo is from February 1979.

But look more closely and it becomes apparent that this actually says something slightly different. The titles actually seem to read “Republique Populaire Revolutionnaire Guinee”.

To confirm what was written on the side of the plane, NA3T dug out the original negatives for the photo and shared this unedited scan of the relevant part of the image. It appears that part of the decal for the letter “G” had peeled off the plane and possibly also the entirety of the word “De”.

Could the rumour of Iran hiring The Starship in 1979 have been caused by someone misreading the side of the plane? This photo suggests it was actually Guinea that hired the plane, not Iran.

To confirm this, we need to know whether Guinea was using this phrase in 1979. Currently the country is officially known as the Republic of Guinea, but in 1978 it was officially renamed the People’s Revolutionary Republic of Guinea. Or, in the country’s official language of French: la République Populaire Révolutionnaire de Guinée.

This document from Senegal in 1981 refers to a cooperation agreement signed with the republic of Guinea in 1979. Sure enough, it refers to Guinea by its official name: la République Populaire Révolutionnaire de Guinée.

So we managed to solve the mystery … eventually. It wasn’t Iran that hired The Starship in February 1979. Instead, it was Guinea.