The Russian aviation sector officially suffers from Western sanctions. This is a first in the country: airline S7 will have to lay off staff in Moscow and reduce the number of connections to and from the Russian capital.
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From our correspondent in Moscow,
S7 The company’s wings have not been clipped, but things are going badly: 20% of its fleet of about a hundred planes is now grounded. More specifically A 320 and A 321 neo. The reason was difficulties with his engine.
” The PW1000G engine exhibits operating problems; Last summer, the manufacturer recalled more than a thousand engines of this model, RBK newspaper notes. Airlines in Europe and the United States have been forced to cancel flights and at least 57 carriers have stopped using planes equipped with these engines. ” Apart from that, everywhere in the world, in this kind of situation, companies can contact the manufacturer.
Impossible in Russia. And for good reason: since the implementation of the ban in 2022, there will be no more spare parts, no more maintenance, no more external technical inspection and no new Western devices can be sold. For almost two years, any flight on the Russian company Boeing or Airbus has, at least on paper, been a risk. repaired by “ friendly countries “, as they say in Russia, in fact it cannot be enough.
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No incidents have been made public with S7 flights which until now served all major cities, but the company still had serious lessons to learn from the situation. The company, according to Russian media, will lay off 15% of its staff in Moscow and invite some other employees to join its main centers in the east: Irkutsk or Novosibirsk, where it wants to focus and strengthen its activities.
This is return to square one. Historically, S7 (S for “Siberia”) is a branch of Soviet Aeroflot. In the early 2000s, the company expanded nationwide to become Russia’s largest private air carrier. ” Pilots can retrain for other types of aircraft, notably the Embraer 170, and even continue to work for the company. In addition, some pilots and flight attendants leave to work for other airlines, including international ones, based on our recommendations. “, the airline told RBK newspaper.
Towards layoffs in other companies?
Russian airlines Aeroflot and Pobeda have already said they are ready to hire flight attendants licensed by the S7 company. However, experts were interviewed by the newspaper merchant Guess: Staff cuts at S7 could be followed by layoffs at other major airlines, as air travel volume in Russia is still 18% below pre-pandemic levels.. After passenger traffic in the Russian Federation averaged 128 million people.
The airport is showing a decline: many shops are now closed due to lack of customers. And the production of Russian aircraft does not promise to solve the problem quickly. In early 2022, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin set a target of 30% of national aircraft in Russian companies by 2030. This is not a given: Last April, the association bringing together the main Russian airlines (AEVT) told itself that “ busy “by” calendar » Considered very slow in national production.
Flights were grounded
In 2023, according to Newsweek, 180 cases of plane breakdowns have been reported in Russia. This is three times more than before the restrictions came into force. Few are known or cause much fear, but in private conversations, anecdotes of breakdowns and flights being delayed, sometimes for long hours, are becoming more and more frequent. A few have hit the headlines in recent months. Last August, passengers on a Red Wings flight were stranded in Yekaterinburg, Urals, for 24 hours in a simultaneous search. technical fault » On two available flights to Turkey.
In a press release, the company acknowledged the difficulties caused by the “ External restrictions » and « Restrictions on the supply of spare parts, which complicates aircraft maintenance ” Also in August, a Pegasus fly plane was delayed in Thailand due to a bad weather monitoring system. In early October, national airline Aeroflot experienced three technical failures in its machines in a single day.
If the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin boast of resisting the punitive measures adopted by the West after the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022, the air transport sector seems to be increasingly affected. A region that is nonetheless important in the world’s largest country, which spans 11 time zones. This fall, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, half-heartedly admitted that he had no solution: “ We face new challenges and we find new ways to solve them “
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