Pilots and passengers were in their seats, the planes were ready for takeoff. But on two days in June, more than 350 flights failed to take off from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport as scheduled. Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship state airline, which claims to be one of the largest airlines in the world, was short on cabin crew.
This story was shared on the Telegram channel Fliegershchinaa forum of the Russian aviation industry.
And it was not a one-time event.
At the end of July, a shortage of pilots led to the cancellation of 68 Aeroflot flights from Sheremetyevo. after to Aviatorshchina. Several other flights were postponed.
RFE/RL confirmed these reports of an unprecedented shortage of pilots and crew members through three sources in the Russian aviation industry who, like other sources interviewed, requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
“At the height of the season, when demand is huge and people are willing to spend money on tickets, we wouldn’t be able to handle it,” commented a Russian co-pilot of an Airbus A320.
“This is surprising and revealing,” the copilot continued. “It’s not the first summer (of peak travel), and we’ve always managed it in the past.”
But the situation changed on February 24, 2022, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Two and a half years later, Aeroflot cannot always find the aircraft, pilots and crew it needs to operate efficiently due to sanctions that have increased costs and reduced revenues. Investigation found by the Russian service of RFE/RL.
“Nobody will fly anymore”
By December 2023, the Russian government had spent 1.09 trillion rubles ($12 billion) since March 2022 to bolster Russia’s aviation industry with subsidies, loans, domestic aircraft manufacturing and buying back leased Boeings and Airbuses, Russian government data showed. analyzed by Reuters.
But these short-term measures are not enough to ensure the supply of trained pilots and crews and well-maintained aircraft, experts say.
When the 2020-21 COVID pandemic and the large-scale invasion of Ukraine limited air traffic, an aviation safety expert said, Russian airlines cut pilot schedules, including for “expensive,” experienced pilots, and reduced or canceled training for the foreign aircraft that after According to the latest government data from April 2022, they accounted for over two-thirds of all civil passenger aircraft in Russia.
After Boeing and Airbus restricted their business with Russian airlines, the government in June 2022 adopted a program to supply 1,036 domestically produced aircraft to Russian airlines by 2030, prompting the companies to switch to training on Russian-made aircraft. Superjets.
However, Aeroflot now says its passenger traffic has increased by 21.4 percent since the first half of 2023, to 25.4 million passengers in the first half of this year. after to the business newspaper Kommersant.
But due to schedule cuts and safety restrictions on pilot and crew flight time – the maximum time set by the aviation authority Rosaviatsia is 90 hours per month – there is a shortage of qualified flight teams.
“We cannot and do not want to fly anymore,” commented an Aeroflot employee. “And no one will fly anymore. That is impossible and unacceptable.”
“But no one is going to go to management and say, ‘If you don’t want to cancel flights, you have to hire more pilots,'” the employee added.
“You can’t do this alone”
Another challenge is finding sufficiently maintained aircraft for the new pilots.
Russia has allocated 300 billion rubles ($3.5 billion) from its sovereign wealth fund in 2023 to transfer the leasing contracts for 169 aircraft from Western lessors to an agency run by the Interfax news agency. reported.
But sanctions that make it difficult to access spare parts and expert repairs mean that foreign aircraft often have to go without parts or rely on “cannibalization” of parts for maintenance, RFE/RL reported in 2023.
The promised Russian replacement for these jets has not yet arrived.
The deliveries of Superjets and MS-21s have been postponed from 2024 to at least 2025.
Some experts doubt that the planes will show up even then.
“Global aircraft production is based on complex international cooperation chains. This cannot be accomplished spontaneously and alone,” said a source from the Russian aviation industry.
This means that not only are there not enough pilots overall at present, but that “there are pilots for the promised Russian aircraft, but they have nothing to fly,” said the expert.
“Pay competitive salaries”
The pilots who actually have something to fly did not have to adjust their wages to inflation, which currently stands at 9.13 percent. after to the Central Bank of Russia.
According to a Russian airline safety expert, the salary of a Russian commercial pilot is a maximum of 350,000 rubles ($3,800) per month. However, that is the salary of a “captain of a large Boeing with many years of professional experience who flies a maximum of 90 hours per month,” said the expert. “Everyone else, and that is the majority, gets less.”
This maximum salary is below the lowest annual salary (US$50,000) that can be paid in a analysis of global pilot salaries from Simple Flying, an aviation news site.
To find better pay and better working conditions with adequate time for rest and vacation, both pilots and crew members are leaving airlines, industry officials said.
Airlines in the Persian Gulf paid pilots twice as much as in Russia, noted the aviation safety specialist.
An Aeroflot flight attendant mentioned acquaintances who left Aeroflot and its low-cost airline Pobeda to join the low-cost airlines FlyDubai and Air Arabia from the United Arab Emirates.
“People I know fly to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and many other places,” the flight attendant added.
An Aviatorshchina commentator observed In order to encourage pilots to return to Aeroflot, the company must pay them “competitive salaries, and that means paying other employees as well.”
Otherwise, another commentator added, Aeroflot could run out of pilots by December who have not yet completed their maximum annual quota of 900 flight hours.
The Aeroflot official quoted above believes that Russian airlines will hire new pilots to increase the airline’s “efficiency,” but whether Aeroflot can afford this is uncertain.
Extremely high costs
In July, Aeroflot announced its first profit since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – 42.2 billion rubles ($470 million) for the second quarter of fiscal 2024, Kommersant reported.
In a statement published on 30 July Press releaseAeroflot attributed the gain to increased demand, but acknowledged that its expenses had also increased.
According to Kommersant, Aeroflot’s spending on fuel, maintenance, repairs and spare parts has more than tripled since the second quarter of 2023, to nearly 33 billion rubles ($367 million).
SPIMEX, the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange, reported that Russian jet fuel prices have risen 30 percent since March 2022.
In the long term, flights to so-called friendly countries – such as China, India and Turkey – cannot compensate for the loss of revenue from more profitable long-haul flights to the USA or the European Union, which will be eliminated after February 2022, writes the newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe. reported in April.
And overflight fees, which before the pandemic brought Aeroflot a third of its annual pretax profits — about $500 million to $800 million, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe — have largely disappeared.
Higher ticket prices, which have risen by 25 percent since 2023 to the equivalent of $77 per 1,000 kilometers, after to the news site Vedomosti cannot make up this difference.
Meanwhile, the government’s plans to increase domestic aircraft production may be reconsidered, according to Kommersant reported At the beginning of August. And the government has no plans to conclude any further leasing contracts for Western aircraft, Transport Minister Roman told the state news agency RIA Novosti at the end of July. reported.
“In the current situation, it will not be possible to maintain the flight readiness of Western aircraft in the long term,” commented another airline safety expert. Without a sufficient number of large aircraft ready for flight and new aircraft, “even the medium-term prospects” are “bleak.”
Aeroflot says it intends to cover the rising costs with profits. However, higher salaries for pilots and crew are not included in these expenses.
Even if it decides to increase prices significantly – an option downplayed by Transport Minister Starovoyt in July – “there will be no money left for higher pilot salaries and better working conditions,” warned the airline security expert. “The pilots will therefore continue to flee.”
