MOSCOW: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in its airlines being banned from European, American and Canadian airspace, leaving the country with leased aircraft it cannot use, and scuttling aerospace industry partnerships with the West.
Russian citizens won’t be flying to Europe or North America anytime soon, with even flights to friendly countries such as China in doubt due to the international community’s ostracisation of the country’s aviation sector, according to aviation analysts.
“Russia will be the world’s largest country with a developed economy and an aviation industry no better than North Korea’s,” Richard Aboulafia, managing director of Michigan-based AeroDynamic Advisory, told Al Jazeera.
“Aviation sanctions are easy to enforce,” said Aboulafia, who has more than 30 years of experience in the aviation industry. “Airlines can’t fly. They will have to completely redo their aircraft plans, which at the moment, are built on Western technology.”
Eurocontrol, the agency that guides air traffic policy in the European Union, reports that 300 flights a day by Russian carriers to Europe and 50 flights a day by European airlines to Russian airports have been suspended.
Russia has retaliated with reciprocal restrictions against any country that has banned its flights.
“It will get progressively harder for Russians to travel for two reasons,” Sash Tusa, an aerospace and defence analyst for Agency Partners LLP in London, told Al Jazeera. “One is that Russian airspace is closed to Western aircraft. In addition, international travel becomes extremely difficult as support for Western-built airline aircraft in Russia is withdrawn.”
Boeing and Airbus, Russia’s main suppliers of commercial aircraft, have cut Russian airlines off from access to spare parts for their planes. Boeing has also shut a design centre it operated in Moscow and temporarily closed its office in Kyiv.
It could be weeks or months before airlines’ supplies of spare parts run out. Airlines could prolong operations by grounding some aircraft and cannibalising them for spare parts to use on the planes that are still flying, although such practices are prohibited under the terms of the leases that cover commercial aircraft.
Like most commercial aircraft today, Russian airlines’ planes are largely owned by leasing companies in the West. Under European sanctions, leasing companies have until March 28 to terminate their contracts with Russian carriers. Several leasing firms, including Ireland-based AerCap, the world’s No.1 player, have confirmed that they have written to their Russian customers seeking the return of their aircraft.
Ulick McEvaddy, the founder of aircraft leasing company Omega Air, has described the task of recovering hundreds of aircraft from Russia at such short notice as “mission impossible” due to the possibility of legal challenges and the ban on Russian aircraft flying in European airspace.
The Cape Town Convention, designed to prevent an airline from absconding with an aircraft, has not been tested in court since it was signed in 2001. Three out of every four passenger and cargo jets in Russian service today are from Boeing or Airbus, which supply more than 300 aircraft each. Only 136 Russian-made jets are operating with Russian airlines, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.
“What are the odds they can be repossessed?” Aboulafia said.
How long Russian aviation remains in the doldrums will depend not only on how long the war in Ukraine lasts but also the time it takes for the Russian state to be rehabilitated in the eyes of the West. –Agencies
