Aeroflot Russian Airlines Airbus A320 civil jet aircrafts at the Moscow-Sheremetyevo International Airport.
Leonid Faerberg/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
Airbus’ CEO said he’s concerned about Russian airlines flying without required maintenance.
Sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine war have prevented Airbus from servicing Russian aircraft.
Russian air travel has recovered to 85% of pre-pandemic capacity, per OAG, a data provider.
The CEO of Airbus has warned of safety concerns over Russian airlines flying without necessary maintenance or spare parts— as sanctions are preventing the French aviation giant from servicing their planes.
“We are worried about the conditions for maintenance as actually the planes are flying a lot,” Guillaume Faury, the CEO of Airbus, said on a media call on Friday, after the company posted its third-quarter results. Airbus separately confirmed the comments in an email to Insider.
Russia lifted all pandemic-related travel restrictions on July 1, and Russian airlines are operating at about 85% of 2019 capacity this winter season, according to data published on October 25 by OAG, a global travel data provider. That’s even though many countries in the world — such as those in the European Union and Canada — have banned Russian aircraft from their airspace, meaning most Russian flights are flying domestic.
“Because of the sanctions, we cannot really monitor and support as we do with our customers in normal times. And that’s something that is indeed creating some concerns on the safety side,” said Faury on the call. “Now, there’s not much we can do about it.”
Due to sanctions against Russia, imports into the country — especially those of aircraft and their spare parts— have collapsed, creating a huge problem for the country, which heavily relies on tech imports.
However, Moscow is taking steps to counter the sanctions, with state-owned tech firm Rostec telling Reuters in September it’s targeting the production of 1,000 airliners by 2030, using locally manufactured parts, in order to reduce dependence on Western technology. Before the start of Ukraine war, planes purchased from Western giants Boeing and Airbus carried 95% of Russian passenger traffic, per Reuters.
Rostec — a conglomerate involved in engineering and defense — has said it aims to substitute imported parts with local ones, but the pain of shortages is already being felt.
Russian state-owned carrier Aeroflot started stripping spare parts from working aircraft due to supply shortages induced by sanctions, Reuters reported in August.