Not for long potentially. I don't have the link right now, but someone posted an interesting thread on Twitter how to fly planes you need a lot of international support. Down to things like supply of replacement parts and access to repair manuals. Their estimate (not sure if accurate) is that in 3 weeks, domestic aviation in Russia will become very hard to run.

(Boing and Airbus already suspended providing replacement parts)

I haven't heard anything about impact on container ships yet, so curious what's the situation there...

Might come as a surprise, but Boing and Airbus are not the only civil airplane manufacturers in the world.

They're certainly not, but they're the biggest and the Russian airlines already own or lease a lot of Boeing and Airbus planes. Aeroflot is nearly all Airbus[0] and Rossiya[1] (largest operator of Russian-made Sukhoi planes) is around half Airbus, half Sukhoi. They could indeed just scrap these and buy a shiny new fleet of, say, Embraer jets but that would involve retraining pilots and support staff, not to mention actually paying for them and waiting for them to be built + delivered (I don't imagine Embraer have a big showroom full of planes ready to be taken home!).

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_fleet

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossiya_Airlines

Just like Embraer would have a ton of trouble delivering a 500 plane replacement, think about what would it take to return 500 leased planes (and for the leasing companies to lease them to someone else to avoid going bankrupt, and for Boeing to deal with a deluge of cheap second-hand planes, etc etc).

Even if all 500 planes are instantly returned at the end of March (how?), there will be reduced traffic to Europe due to the current European bans, and the rest of the traffic will be handled by the remaining fleet. I'm not even talking about Comac or other options.

I think the point being made originally was not that the leased planes will be returned (many articles suggest they won't), it was that these planes need ongoing maintenance and parts which the airlines won't have access to. The original tweet thread viraptor is referring to suggested that this is something that will hit the airlines much sooner than we laypersons might have imagined.

We'll see in the coming weeks, but the scenario you describe where a catastrophic decline in Russian flights such that there are enough non-Airbus/Boeing planes that can manage them is effectively a collapse in Russian civil aviation sector which is kinda what the thread was implying.

The thread in question https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498723248183382020.html

That was the exact thread I was looking for. Thank you.

Fortunately for civilian Russian aviation, there are currently plenty of foreign-owned planes that just happen to be sitting on Russian airfields, that can't go anywhere, and are chock-full of spare parts.

It might get them out of a tight spot in the short term, but I'm not sure if cannibalising abandoned planes is a particularly viable long-term strategy

Practically they are the only ones. While Chinese and Russian make some of their own they are still dependent on West for engine and other critical components.

Engines: MC-21 flew with a locally built PD-14 engine in 2020 (wikipedia). Work is underway on SSJ-New with a local PD-8 or a PD-14. There was a snag with composites, which were sanctioned by US a few years ago because of some other random bullshit, but now they are built locally as well.

> other critical components

Like what? This sounds a bit hand-wavy, what are those critical components, if you don't mind me asking?

Do you expect them to fly Cessnas now?

Clue me in which large manufacturer of passenger plans you have on your mind. There is practically nobody left any more. Boeing, Airbus and Embraer are controlling the market and all of those are directly or indirectly sanctioning Russia right now. Bombardier at this point is practically Airbus. In Russia there is one locally manufactured plane that has some traction from Sukhoi, but it also won't be able to be serviced or produced any more as key components are now sanctioned.

So whom do you have in mind now? Comac?

> key components are now sanctioned

Since you are so specific, can you at least hint what exactly are these key components that are now being sanctioned? Not engines.

And sure, why not Comac, too, but that's a different story. Doesn't quite look like Cessna, does it?

The locally produced engines you mentioned elsewhere are barely past testing phase with single deployments in 2020/2021. The plans for this year were to produce 10 planes and that was assuming fully functioning economy and government grants. I'd be honestly impressed if they actually pulled off those 10.

Container shipping is about to be reduced, Maersk just announced that they would only ship food to Russia going forward. Aviation in Russia might come mostly to a halt. About 500 airplanes are leased and have to be returned within a month to the leasing companies, the rest is running out of spare parts quickly.

So now we are all of a sudden in the "might come to a halt" hypothetical. Ok. First of all, at least 40% of the planes are home-built, so aviation in Russia most certainly will not come to a halt.

Then, how do you picture 500 planes getting returned and leasing companies instantly re-leasing them to other customers to keep their own business afloat? Even if that does happen, worst case, that will reduce Russian air traffic to something like Covid days-level. There are a lot of hypotheticals in this thread, facts on the ground right now are, the planes are flying, cargo ships are delivering and all but 7 banks are moving the money across the borders just fine.

> First of all, at least 40% of the planes are home-built, so aviation in Russia most certainly will not come to a halt.

Home-build - maybe, but not without parts from the US\EU, not to mention most of the production equipment is not Russian too and you have to maintain it or replace it at somepoint.

Oh and to build something you need materials - some are local, some will have to be replaced if possible.

This will be a huge problem, especially in a country with strong corruption tradition.

Or salvage parts and engines from the leased Boeings if they are comparable.

That would assume they are willing to break their contract and not returning the machines. Which they can do, but then they will never be able to lease a machine again. At best, this buys them a couple of months of operations.

You underestimate the shortsightedness and short memories of businessmen when shown a pile of cash, especially at companies like Boeing and other defense manufacturers.

The businessmen might think of their wallets first, but as long as the sanctions last, they cannot send spare parts to Russia. Also, the defense manufacturers are currently quite happy with the increased defense spendings.

Whatever the US role in the events in Ukraine was, for sure they won't let Russia off the hook easily after this invasion.

Ok, at some point, sure, maybe.

Home-built doesn’t mean “all parts produced in Russia”. And it just takes a handful of parts to be included in sanctions – especially with just-in-time manufacturing – for an entire production line to grind to a halt.

There are about half a dozen SSJs and MC-21s produced every month, let's check back in a couple of months from now, and see if those lines ground to a halt or doubled their production. I'm curious myself!

And how many of them are using home built engines and not engines bought in the west?

> About 500 airplanes are leased and have to be returned within a month to the leasing companies,

Putin will make a law that returning airplanes to abroad is illegal. Foreigners have not been allowed to sell Russian shares already nearly a week. So nothing new there.

They cannot fly to most countries anyway, so the risk of getting them confiscated while landed somewhere is small.

Well, yes, they can keep and operate them illegally. Short term: problem solved. Long term: its even worse.

It might be immoral, but surely keeping they planes will be legal by some means, executive fiat or whatever.

Is there international treaties covering such things?

Mind, I'm from the UK our government just ignore international law when they like and only to please their own ends, not even in times of crisis, so can't see something as simple as breaking a treaty will cause any change here.

Exactly. It'll be a slow and steady decline in terms of safety, pilot training and so on.

On the front page is a post about yandex where yandex says that they have equipment for a year on hand but there is a legitimate concern that as their equipment naturally breaks they will not be able to source replacements. There's no garuntee on what will be available for any up and coming company