One in five aircraft operated by Russia’s 11 largest airlines is grounded this summer, the Russian business daily Kommersant calculated. Of the 673 aircraft that together account for more than 90% of the country’s passenger traffic, 130 are not flying — 19.3% of the total fleet.
The Aeroflot group, which operates 349 aircraft, has 37 grounded — roughly 10%, a rate experts consider normal. The picture is sharply worse at the other carriers: among the remaining airlines combined, nearly a third of the fleet is out of service, 93 of 322 aircraft.
S7, Russia’s largest private carrier, has the most grounded planes — 33 of its 104 aircraft, mostly sidelined by engine problems. At the other end, Pobeda’s entire fleet of 42 Boeing 737s is flying this summer.
Prolonged maintenance is the main cause of the groundings, Kommersant reported. Experts polled by the newspaper said that a third of the fleet being grounded at the largest airlines is “not a bad result” for an industry that has been under sanctions for nearly five years — though the situation could worsen as aircraft age and their service lives run out.
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