How Russia’s airline industry was pushed to the brink in a week
Banned from swaths of the world’s skies, denied access to vital spare parts, stripped of insurance and battling to keep hold of planes, Russia’s aviation industry has in the space of a week been plunged into its gravest crisis in decades. Western governments have unleashed waves of sanctions since Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine late last month, but few have delivered such a visible punch as those targeted at an industry that accounted for 6 per cent of the world’s airline capacity last year. Flag carrier Aeroflot, which took delivery of its first western aircraft from Airbus when Boris Yeltsin was in the Kremlin, on Saturday announced it would stop all international flights other than to Belarus. S7, Russia’s second-largest airline, has also scrapped flights outside domestic airspace. The industry’s mushrooming crisis is “unprecedented, unpredictable and unforecastable,” said Max Kingsley-Jones of Ascend by Cirium, the aviation consultancy. With no clarity on how long the sanctions from US and EU authorities will remain in place, experts warned that in a worst-case scenario Russian domestic carriers’ schedules would shrink to levels not seen in three decades. The EU’s sanctions prohibit the sale, transfer, supply or export of aircraft or any components, while the US has introduced export restrictions including on Russia’s aerospace sector. “The Russian aviation sector is now on a footing that is similar to North Korea and Iran — and similar to where it was under Soviet rule,” noted Rob Stallard, an analyst at Vertical Research Partners. Russia’s carriers have been hit just as they were drawing a line under the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Expectations of a steady and sustained rebound in domestic demand has been replaced, at least for now, by extreme volatility. In a sign of the concern, the US, French and UK governments this week advised their citizens to leave the country while commercial flights were still available. Story has more.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2022-03-07/general/how-russia2019s-airline-industry-was-pushed-to-the-brink-in-a-week
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How Russia’s airline industry was pushed to the brink in a week
Banned from swaths of the world’s skies, denied access to vital spare parts, stripped of insurance and battling to keep hold of planes, Russia’s aviation industry has in the space of a week been plunged into its gravest crisis in decades. Western governments have unleashed waves of sanctions since Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine late last month, but few have delivered such a visible punch as those targeted at an industry that accounted for 6 per cent of the world’s airline capacity last year. Flag carrier Aeroflot, which took delivery of its first western aircraft from Airbus when Boris Yeltsin was in the Kremlin, on Saturday announced it would stop all international flights other than to Belarus. S7, Russia’s second-largest airline, has also scrapped flights outside domestic airspace. The industry’s mushrooming crisis is “unprecedented, unpredictable and unforecastable,” said Max Kingsley-Jones of Ascend by Cirium, the aviation consultancy. With no clarity on how long the sanctions from US and EU authorities will remain in place, experts warned that in a worst-case scenario Russian domestic carriers’ schedules would shrink to levels not seen in three decades. The EU’s sanctions prohibit the sale, transfer, supply or export of aircraft or any components, while the US has introduced export restrictions including on Russia’s aerospace sector. “The Russian aviation sector is now on a footing that is similar to North Korea and Iran — and similar to where it was under Soviet rule,” noted Rob Stallard, an analyst at Vertical Research Partners. Russia’s carriers have been hit just as they were drawing a line under the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Expectations of a steady and sustained rebound in domestic demand has been replaced, at least for now, by extreme volatility. In a sign of the concern, the US, French and UK governments this week advised their citizens to leave the country while commercial flights were still available. Story has more.<br/>
