1/ Sanctions on the Russian aviation industry are leading to an increasing number of malfunctions and emergency landings, due to a lack of maintenance and technical support, and an acute shortage of spare parts. Safety is said to be gradually deteriorating. ⬇️

2/ The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reports that sanctions have had drastic effects on Russian airlines, which overwhelmingly rely on Western-made aircraft. Boeing and Airbus both cut off access to technical support and the supply of spare parts was stopped.

3/ Some spare parts are still available through 'grey schemes', such as wheels and brakes. However, industry insiders say that such grey imports are arrive 'much slower and cost more'. Engine parts cannot be imported, forcing airlines to do costly maintenance work themselves.

4/ This affects Russian-made aircraft too, such as the Sukhoi Superjet 100 and MS-21, which both mostly rely on foreign-made components. Fuel filters are reportedly unavailable, leading the airlines to simply wash them and wait for them to fail instead of replacing them.

5/ The Russian aviation industry is replying on spare parts coming from places such as the UAE, China, Turkey and Iran. However, these reportedly take 3-4 times longer to arrive and cost 3-4 times as much. The supply chain is being choked off as sanctions are tightened.

6/ According to Novaya Gazeta, 'spare parts suppliers have begun requiring intermediary companies in 'friendly countries' (Turkey, UAE, China, Kazakhstan) to indicate the final recipient of spare parts, up to the tail number of the aircraft.'

7/ 'A number of countries (Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan) are simply in the 'block' with large suppliers of aircraft parts and materials as violating sanctions.'

8/ The Russian government compensated for these problems in the first year of the war with Ukraine by allocating them 172 billion rubles ($2.15 billion) from the federal budget, of which 100 billion ($1.25 billion) was intended to subsidise domestic transportation.

9/ However, this has only put off an inevitable crunch, which now seems to be arriving. Novaya Gazeta reports that airlines are cannibalising their aircraft for spare parts, while the planes that are still flying are suffering from decreasing reliability.

10/ As Novaya Gazeta comments, 'Since the beginning of 2023, news feeds have increasingly received reports of malfunctions, depressurization, emergency landings of Western-made airliners from Russian operators: Aeroflot, Rossiya, Pobeda, Azur, UTair and others.'