Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship airline, announced yesterday that it is no longer offering inflight entertainment following sanctions from western companies.

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Sanctions strike again, no more inflight entertainment

Aeroflot posted a statement on its Telegram channel saying that foreign companies stopped providing streaming services. The airline claimed the disruption was only temporary and that it would be good for passengers to do a digital detox, take a nap, or read a book during its flights. Aeroflot said that it is working on a domestic solution to the problem.

Following the Kremlin’s military invasion of Ukraine, Russia was hit with several sanctions, and aviation was one of the hardest-hit sectors. Sanctions forced Aeroflot to suspend all of its international flights after the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States banned Russian aircraft from their airspace. Further sanctions now prevent Russia from purchasing spare aircraft parts and technology.

Russian aviation continues to struggle

In October, Simple Flying reported that Aeroflot’s passenger numbers remained down due to sanctions. Ticket prices have skyrocketed, and fuel prices have increased significantly, leading to lower passenger numbers. The decrease in Russian passenger numbers has been going on for months. The first nine months of 2022 are 8.2% lower than 2021, a year in which air traffic was already down because of the effects of the COVID pandemic.

As most of the world was trying to recover from the massive COVID pandemic, Russia decided to start a war. The consequences of the war between Russia and Ukraine have been noticeable worldwide, but nothing compares to the loss of lives. Before the beginning of the war, Russian carriers were experiencing quicker rebounds than the rest of the world because of a large domestic market. But now, the lack of access to maintenance and spare parts has interrupted that growth.

Because Russian carriers cannot take delivery of new foreign aircraft, they are forced to devise alternative solutions. One solution is to bring new aircraft from Russian manufacturer Rostec, which promises to deliver significant numbers of aircraft. The transition to operating Russian-made aircraft means that Russia will need 3,500 new pilots.

“It is assumed we will need an additional 3,500 pilots to grow our fleet using domestically constructed aircraft.” – Sergei Aleksandrovsky

The country must also build eight flight simulators to train new pilots.

Russian air traffic continues to be down

The latest figures show that Russian air traffic in October was down 25% year-over-year. Data from Rosstat state statistics service shows that Russian airlines carried 8.25 million passengers in October, totaling 81 million passengers year-to-date. As mentioned above, Russian air traffic was down by 8.2% through the first nine months of the year compared to last year, and through the first ten months, that number is 14.3% lower than the first ten months of 2021. The hardest hit airline is Aeroflot, which in the first ten months of 2022 has carried one million fewer passengers than it did through the same period last year.