Russian airlines can no longer fly foreign-owned jets over Chinese airspace after Moscow’s seizure of foreign airliners threw their ownership into doubt, according to reports by the Russian news website RBK.

China bans Russia’s foreign-owned jets

Following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February of this year, the US and the EU enacted wide-ranging sanctions on Russia. As a result of these sanctions, Western aircraft leasing companies and aerospace firms are no longer allowed to do business with the country or its airlines. While a lessor would normally repossess their aircraft in this situation, Russia has refused to hand over planes that were inside its borders and has been accused of stealing these aircraft. Many of the aircraft were registered abroad, which led to their corresponding regulator revoking the aircraft’s airworthiness certificate. To get around this, Russia has been re-registering a significant number of aircraft. Russia has re-registered 360 aircraft since the start of March 2022, according to data from consultancy firm IBA. Almost 150 of these took place in just five days between 13th March and the 18th. Under international aviation law, the action of forcibly re-registering aircraft is illegal. In order to re-register an aircraft, an authority must first gain the permission of the aircraft owner and proof of deregistration from the previous registry. Of the 360 re-registered aircraft, 171 belong to non-Russian lessors. China’s air regulator reportedly asked all foreign carriers to update the ownership information of their aircraft. However, after Russian airlines failed to prove that some of their aircraft had been deregistered abroad, they have now been banned from flying into Chinese airspace.

Wider issues

The move further limits the already severely reduced destinations that these aircraft could now fly to. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many countries banned Russian airlines from using their airspace. The move by China to ban foreign-owned Russian aircraft from its airspace will raise further questions about whether Russia’s seizure of these aircraft has benefited the country or merely damaged its business reputation. It also remains unclear how long Russia will be able to keep these aircraft flying after sanctions hampered the country’s ability to purchase spare parts or other vital services which keep the planes in a flight-worthy condition. There are already reports of aircraft cannibalization in Russia.

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A grim future ahead for Russian aviation

According to ch-aviation, a leaked, unofficial report from the Russian government has surfaced, detailing their assumptions of how the Russian aviation sector will develop in the next decade. The report covers a wide variety of metrics to measure the development of Russian aviation, including passenger numbers and the number of commercial aircraft. These metrics point toward a poor future for Russia’s aerospace industry. A more pessimistic view of the future entails a shortage of foreign-made aircraft, which the Russian government has pledged to solve by expanding the domestic, Russian-made commercial fleet. If sanctions continue, Russia predicts that over half of the commercial aircraft in Russia would have to be grounded in the worst-case scenario. In addition to cannibalism, other possible routes for finding spare parts include sourcing them from countries that are not currently sanctioning the country, such as through vendors in Turkey and India. According to Reuters, as well as its foreign-owned aircraft ban, China has also turned down Russian airlines’ requests for parts. What do you think of China’s ban on foreign-owned Russian aircraft? Let us know in the comments below.