Almost two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, the sanctions imposed by the west are having an increasingly noticeable effect on the country’s aviation. Among the sanctions, closure of airspace for Russian aircraft and the cease in supplying new aircraft or spare parts and even stopping access to pilot training have paralysed Russian aviation.
Flag carrier Aeroflot however bet on domestic flights in addition to launching a new international network towards countries without sanctions. Putin also passed a law allowing for the inscription of foreign aircraft in the Russian national registry, thus making their repossession difficult. Russian Minister of Transport, Vitaly Savelyev said last year at the time that almost 800 aircraft were transferred to the domestic registry.
Despite all these and billions of roubles poured into the survival of Russia’s aviation, airlines were still forced to strip planes for parts, not only for the Boeing and Airbus jets, but also for the Russian-made Sukhoi, the parts for which are made abroad, even if it is ultimately assembled in Russia. Last summer, flag carrier Aeroflot was reported operating at least nine planes without functioning brakes due to wearing out.
As more and more components wear out and Russia pushes past required maintenance, incidents and emergency landings become more and more frequent. Engines in fumes, faulty wing flaps, lost cabin pressure, hydraulics problems, worn off breaks, short circuits, cracked parts and failed steering systems, autopilot and oil filters are among the major issues Russian airlines have been experiencing.
“Over the first eight days of December, civilian Russian airplanes experienced at least eight serious mechanical failures”, the Washington Post reported. Surprisingly, under the circumstances, no accidents have yet caused any casualties.
The Federal Air Transport Agency reported in December that, from January to November 2023, 400 civil aviation incidents occurred sue to serious equipment malfunctions, which was hailed as good news since it was 2% fewer than over the same period in 2022. Further trying to play down the impact of the sanctions, the agency claimed that “logistic chains are available to domestic airlines, thanks to which they receive the required spare parts and components for the normal operation of aircraft”.
These “logistic chains” are available through, among others, Central Asia, Türkiye, Singapore and Iran, a country whose experience of similar sanctions is supposed to have given it “extensive knowledge in repairing aircraft under such circumstances”. Moreover, “in 2022, Russian authorities issued developer certificates allowing 100 companies, including seven airlines, to modify parts and perform nonstandard maintenance to keep planes flying”, according to the Washington Post. In the meantime, pilots and cabin crews are reportedly being asked to not declare malfunctions, possibly contributing to the 2% decrease in official incident numbers.
“I am independent and my motivation is to provide safety, and when I talk about all the problems, my idea is not to make people nervous, it is for the sake of safety”, Andrei Patrakov, an independent Russian aviation safety expert and head of RunAvia, a company specializing in drone and aircraft safety, said in an interview. “Sometimes Russian government organizations or state-owned companies don’t even think about these problems. But sometimes it’s a very big issue with air safety and some people may finally die.”
For the moment, planes still take to the skies, with delayed take-offs, emergency landings and the occasional cabin depressurisation, but Russian aviation seems nowhere near ready to give up. With risks increasing by the day and authorities trying to pretend everything’s fine, it seems like only a matter of time until a serious accident, with casualties, will happen.
