After world's airline giants Airbus and Boeing left russia due to the sanctions imposed over the war with Ukraine, Moscow found it very difficult to maintain civilian air travel. Because despite all the russian "one-of-a-kind" Sukhoi Superjet 100, MS-21 and Tu-204 projects, 95% of all the passenger flow in the russian federation was taken care of by Western-made aircraft.
As the sanctions kicked in, the maintenance, the repair and the supply of spare parts for these activities has become a big dilemma and resulted in russia losing 11% of its Western airliners throughout 2022. In particular, 85 planes just had not been able to receive a green light to take off in international airports and remained on the ground.
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More than that, according to the same norms, they should have stayed on the ground back in russia as well, even for internal flights, and it is a real problem for such a vast country. Especially since the russian "import substitution" program has failed to obtain crucial aircraft parts.
So the russians resorted to the usual. Which is, to increase the timespan between repairs and routine maintenance checks. The decision comes from "Rostransnadzor", russian transport supervision service. The governmental agency said it was only lending a hand to airline companies:
"The offered approach provides that every individual case will be considered by Rostransnadzor and Rosaviatsiya [air transport agency – Defense Express], design bureaus and scientific research organizations," the transport supervisor stated, as quoted by russian state-affiliated TASS, and added:
"This approach will allow to take understandable, transparent and safe decisions regarding prolongation of compliance with directives of airworthiness and aircraft maintenance."
To put it simply, foreign planes can continue take flights despite the need for repair because the authorities said so and secured it with a report by specialists from "Tupolev" or "Sukhoi" plants, who have not even managed to make a single decent rival for Airbus or Boeing's planes.
Or even simpler: the russians are taking part in a lottery every time they get on board such a plane, with the prize being to arrive at the destination alive. Surely, there are still some spare parts left in reserve, so the companies will be able to take a minimum of care of their airliners for a while, but the numbers of failures and breakdowns will only grow. Then, plane crashes with casualties among civilian passengers will be soon to follow.
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