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.