Azur Air was forced to ground eight aircraft owned by foreign companies due to the sanctions.
Russia’s largest charter airline, Azur Air, has grounded a third of its fleet due to Western sanctions. Now it uses only 14 aircraft out of 22. This was said by the airline’s deputy general director for production Andrei Mukanin, avianews.com reports on Monday, October 30.
According to him, Azur Air now flies American aircraft – Boeing 757 and Boeing 767. European sanctions prohibit the legal supply of spare parts and aircraft maintenance.
The eight idle planes are owned by foreign companies and Azur Air cannot use them for flights abroad, but the airline wants to buy them. However, this will not solve the maintenance problem, Mukanin believes.
Azur Air now independently repairs the American aircraft at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, and has sent engines from the aircraft for repair to Iran, which is also under US sanctions.
The main partner of Azur Air is the tour operator Anex Tour, which worked in Ukraine with the airlines of Azur Air Ukraine. The Ukrainian air carrier stopped flying a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and resumed operations in the spring of 2023 under the new name Skyline Express, so as not to be associated with Russia. Skyline Express operates flights to Europe.
As is known, the aircraft in the Russian Federation performed 2,000 flights with defective spare parts.
Source: korrespondent
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