MOSCOW, February 1. /TASS/. Russian carriers Western-made airliners may "easily fly" until 2030 provided that work is done to maintain their flight worthiness, Head of the Federal Agency for Air Transport Alexander Neradko said in an interview with RBC daily.
Neradko noted that sanctions, including a ban on the supply of spare parts and maintenance of aircraft, have not affected flight safety in Russia. "I am confident that it has not become more dangerous to fly. And it has nothing to do with the presence or absence of original spare parts," the official explained.
Heads of Russia’s largest aviation group Aeroflot and the unified Far Eastern airline Aurora Sergey Aleksandrovsky and Konstantin Sukhorebrik share Neradko’s view, the paper wrote.
Head of the country’s air transport agency also stressed that the term of ‘cannibalization’ should be abandoned. "It appeared at the behest of those who have never worked in civil aviation and who are unaware of the fact that the practice of interchanging serviceable spare parts from jet to jet has always been widespread, even during the Soviet times," he pointed out.
After the onset of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine the West gradually began introducing numerous large-scale sanctions against Moscow, which particularly targeted Russian airlines.