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Half of Russia's A320/A321neo Fleet Grounded Amid Engine Issues and Sanctions
- lavren1974 2y ago[flagged]
- ivan_gammel 2y agoOriginal article in Russian: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7312839 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7312839
- layer8 2y agoThe article also notes that A320/A321neo only make up 5% of the fleets of Russian airlines.
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoSo essentially this news is about 2.5% of the fleet. The article also talks about early airplanes of these models being unreliable.
- layer8 2y agoYeah, it’s more about the maintenance requirements of these models than anything else.
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoWhat is "the fleet"? This hits different companies in different ways. S7 which prior to the war was a very well received and modern airline has a meaningful number of those. For S7 31 out of 39 planes (with those engines) are out of service or about to go out of service. The total fleet today is only around 85 planes depending on how you count, and most of the planes that were ordered are not being produced for S7 at the moment. That's a pretty significant blow to the airline.
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoTotal fleet of civilian airplanes. Specifically S7 seems to be quite impacted (and they're about the only company impacted), but it sounds like it's mostly due to the low quality of these planes.
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoThe problem is not the planes, but the maintenance requirements for the engines on those planes and Russia cannot do any maintenance due to the sanctions. In general flying in Russia has been a pretty questionable experience since the beginning of the war. Their regulator is still barely functional at this moment and a lot of secrecy is happening. For instance you will find barely any incidents reports any more. We have been intentionally avoiding Russian airlines for flights in and out of Russia for our family for the last few years due to safety concerns.
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoI haven't heard of any accidents in civilian air traffic in Russia in last few years. Of course you're free to make your choices. Anyway, don't overestimate the issue: 2.5% of the fleet seems to be grounded right now.
- jhugo 2y agoHmm, I think you may have just not been paying attention? There was the Superjet that crashed and burned at Lukhovitsy just a few months ago, the A320 that ran out of fuel and landed in the field near Novosibirsk a year ago, the AN26 that crashed in 2021, the Superjet that crashed and burned at Moscow in 2019…
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoI forgot about the incident at Lukhovitsy - that was w/o passengers. 2019/2021 incidents are completely out of scope of "recent years".
- lawn 2y agoIt's also hints at the much larger maintenance problem that Russia has.
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoSounds like wishful thinking to me.
- signatoremo 2y agoThey didn’t mention of Boeing fleet but the situation is supposedly the same. Together, while only small percentage, they are more efficient, can transport more, go farther, need less maintenance, so more desirable.
- Etheryte 2y agoArticles like these are a good example that while Russia often tries to downplay or outright deny the sanctions have any effect on them, they do work. This is only one specific example with a specific plane model, but their whole airline industry is facing similar issues on many fronts. Many repairs that used to be business as usual are now either prohibitively expensive or downright impossible due to the sanctions. Similar problems exist across a wide range of industries in Russia. There's a reason why they closed off their stock market, they can't afford to let the full impact be visible.
- reducesuffering 2y agoThe Russian Ruble is also starting to do very bad again: https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=RUB&view=5Y https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=RUB&view=5Y
- sedan_baklazhan 2y ago>There's a reason why they closed off their stock market That's a completely false information. The stock market isn't closed.
- dcrazy 2y agoThe post you are quoting did not say they closed the stock market. They said they “closed off” the stock market, which implies denying access to certain classes of investors. That said, I’m not finding anything about Russia prohibiting foreign investment, but I am finding a lot about sanctions prohibiting dollar and Euro investment in Russia.
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoI have an investor account and I know for sure the stock market isn't closed.
- jhugo 2y ago“Closed off” means “restricted access to”. It doesn’t mean “closed”. I have no idea what restrictions the parent was referring to, but they weren’t saying that the stock market shut down.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 2y agoBelsat's article[1] is a bit more detailed and I found this fragment interesting: >According to Andrei Kramarenko, a leading expert at the Institute of Transport Economics of the Higher School of Economics, passenger traffic in Russia has almost stopped growing due to insufficient supply. In September, Russia's Ministry of Transport revised its annual forecast to last year's level of 103 million passengers carried by aircraft. >Seat occupancy on Russian passenger planes this summer reached 93-95 percent. The expert believes that the situation will fail to improve next year, which may prompt airlines to simultaneously reduce average annual flight times and maximize redistribution of their share of seat supply toward the summer when effective demand and ticket margins are several times higher. So basically it seems that their airlines are stretched thin. [1] - https://en.belsat.eu/83600150/russia-half-of-airbus-a320-and-a321neo-grounded-due-to-lack-of-engines-kommersant https://en.belsat.eu/83600150/russia-half-of-airbus-a320-and...
- slater 2y agoIs a ~95% seat occupancy considered bad...?
- jhugo 2y agoThe comment you replied to says that they can’t meet demand due to insufficient supply (due to grounded aircraft). Very high occupancy is consistent with that. If Delta suddenly had half as many aircraft they would always be full too.
- rtsil 2y agoIt's bad if half of your fleet is also grounded.
- slater 2y agoGotcha, thanks!
- hammock 2y agoCounterintuitively, yes, because air travel is a Cournot good and you grow/make money by expanding supply (more planes), which they can’t
- DrBazza 2y agoDon't worry, the Russian rail network is in a worse state - https://www.newsweek.com/russian-railway-collapse-sanctions-ukraine-war-1935049 https://www.newsweek.com/russian-railway-collapse-sanctions-...
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoRussia doesn't import RW rolling stock. This is plain lies.
- loeg 2y agoGreat to see sanctions working. Withdraw from Ukraine and sanctions end.
- sedan_baklazhan 2y agoSurrendering because 2.5% of the fleet may be not working sounds reasonable to me!
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Withdraw from Ukraine and sanctions end This will be Europe’s first post-War test of security integrity. My suspicion is it will fail—that Europe as a single force, versus collection of countries crowded on a continent, is an American invention, and without American strength will dissolve divided. But my hope is it will succeed.
- rtsil 2y agoThere's an argument that the US did everything to prevent Europe from coalescing into a single force and only want Europe to be a single market, not much more, for instance by convincing Eastern European countries to trust their protective umbrella rather than the French-German domination.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> the US did everything to prevent Europe from coalescing into a single force and only want Europe to be a single market, not much more I mean yes, we did. Western Europe was unifying under Berlin in the 1940s. > by convincing Eastern European countries to trust their protective umbrella rather than the French-German domination Militarily speaking, modern Germany is irrelevant. (Partly due to how it’s been managed post-War.) Especially to Eastern Europe, whose security concerns require a nuclear umbrella.
- fatbird 2y agoIn the 90s the US scuttled an EU plan to create an EU military force that would be relatively small--around 50,000 personnel--but would be the umbrella military organization under which national forces would come together if needed. Trump and conservatives complain mightily about EU underspending on defence, but that's been by American design. While the EU was/is dependent on the American security umbrella, the US had a lot of leverage over Europe. The carrot was "you don't need to spend so much on defence, we've got you covered" and the stick was "shame if we didn't have you covered anymore, since you've been underspending for so many years.
- seanieb 2y agoWeren’t lots of those planes leased from an Irish company, and now effectively stolen property?
- jdalgetty 2y agoAt this point, what would Russia have to do to get back onside with the rest of the world? Obviously, ending the conflict with Ukraine is the first step, but what else would they need to do? How long would it take for them to get out of the doghouse, so to speak?
- jzawodn 2y agoI think a major change in leadership would be the first step.
- lawn 2y agoThey can follow the leads of Japan and Germany. Unconditional surrender, with a complete cultural restructure and admitting to the atrocities, and prosecuting everyone responsible is a good start. But of course, that won't happen anytime soon.
- blashyrk 2y agoBut that would imply Russia becoming a neo-colony of the US, like the two mentioned countries. Which I don't think would ever happen, I think Russia would chose MAD over that if forced to make that choice. Russia under Yeytsin was already drifting towards becoming something like that, and has been firmly going in the other direction ever since
- thodin 2y agoRussia can't choose anything by itself. It's the people in Kremlin who will decide, like it was when Stalin died.
- hsyehbeidhh 2y ago[dead]
- tim333 2y agoI'd dispute that Germany and Japan are neo-colonys of the US. Where are the colonial governors?
- tehjoker 2y agoWhy don't we just do a peace deal? Over a million have died over nothing so far.
- lawn 2y agoAll Russia have to do is back away you know. What? They don't want to? Then maybe we can just forget about the genocide, give Russia time to rebuild their forces and recover their economy, so they can repeat the process in a couple of years? (While allowing them to continue their genocide on occupied territory. But at least we don't have to read about it!)
- tim333 2y agoThe things a mess though. It might be better to have some sort of freeze and then figure something to stop them repeating the process.
- MrHamburger 2y agoRussia has 19th century imperial mindset. They will use cease fire to rearm and repeat the process. Only way how to stop them is either change of the government (invasion, coup) or giving Ukraine nuclear weapons, either directly or indirectly through membership in NATO. Anything else is about as worthless as "Peace for our time" from Munich 1938.
- lawn 2y agoMaybe we should just figure out a way to enforce world peace while we're at it?
- tehjoker 2y agomaybe the us and nato should back away? at least ukraine is on russias border wtf are we doing there i do object to your use of the word "genocide" when there is a literal U.S. backed genocide occurring right now in gaza
- 2y ago