As Russia’s world narrows with sweeping sanctions, it’s about to take the inevitable step of making about 100 state-of-the-art Airbus and Boeing airliners virtually worthless. The state aviation authority Rosaviatsia has issued production certificates to five Russian companies to start making bootleg parts for the aircraft and more are expected to be approved shortly according to aviacononline. So far, the parts approved are cabin items like seats and galley equipment but even the installation of an unapproved seat can cancel the airworthiness certificate of an aircraft in the rest of the world.
Those airplanes won't be flyable outside of Russia and Belarus, and, possibly, China. But I would not bet much on them flying to China. While the Chinese have been backing the Russians, on more or less of a wobbly basis, they, so far, have been mindful of the risks of getting splashed by the sanctions on Russia.
Aeroflot, back in the days of the USSR, wasn't exactly known to be a safe carrier. It's probably a good bet that the bad old days will return.
...and China has been struggling since 2008 to build a home-grown competitor to Boeing's 737 Max at half the cost....and making very, very heavy weather of it, missing development deadlines and running up the sunk costs such that it now costs the same as the Max...and isn't yet in production. They can be sure if they get in bed with the Russians, it will further sink the credibility of its COMAC C919.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919
At this point, Russia would better off to source everything from China and derive their technology from Chinese R&D. Once Chinese military aviation was a copy of Russia designs....now the tide may flow the other way. Wow, Russia a technological client of China!
But either way, it's a low bar.
Delta's not a Russian (or Belarusian) Registered Airliner, is it? I'm flying into flyover later this month and uhhmmm, yeah ... I'm not necessarily happy about it.
ReplyDeleteI believe Delta code-shared with Aeroflot. They probably have discontinued that arrangement.
ReplyDeleteThx Cap'n ~ I was making a joke ...
ReplyDeleteBack in the day the only Russian airlines we U.S. gov. were allowed to fly in were Aeroflot and Transaero. Transaero was (Believe it went belly up a few years ago) a lot like U.S. Air except in Russian and French as well as English. Coming back from frozenstan that winter got desperate and flew a Siberair IL-86 to Moscow. With the fares they were charging don't know how they bought the gas, let alone maintained anything.
ReplyDelete