Originally Posted by
kyanar
No, no it is not. You can't just take a third party's property. In any country which actually follows the rule of law, that's unlawful. If you owe money to a finance company, and they get a court sheriff/bailiff to come to your house and repossess things, they cannot just take random objects belonging to other residents or rented from another company.
As you have at least begun to realise in your edited post, you need to do your research into
aviation law.
In many/most jurisdictions, airports (and air traffic authorities) have the right to detain an aircraft if there are outstanding charges owed in respect of that aircraft. That applies irrespective of who owns the aircraft.
In fact in the UK, the airport can detain an aircraft and demand payment of outstanding charges in respect of the
entire fleet of the operator, even if the owner/lessor of the detained aircraft does not own any of the rest of that operator’s fleet. See here for an example:
http://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/k...wers-in-the-uk
Whether such a fleet lien is possible in Iceland I don’t know, but clearly there is at least a statutory power of detention over particular aircraft as in this Air Berlin case.
The issue here is thus not one of theft, but of conflict of laws and the extent to which German insolvency law prevents (or does not prevent) the Icelandic airport from taking this action.