LONDON – According to data from RadarBox.com, Aeroflot’s flight movement statistics have dropped 30% as the Ukraine Crisis continues to unfold.

Such news won’t be much of a surprise as sanctions imposed on Russian carriers continue to bite and hinder the airline’s ability to operate in most of the world.

Without further ado, let’s get into the numbers…

The Numbers…

For this week, the airline handled 294 movements, based on a seven-day rolling average provided by the flight-tracking company.

This is a decrease of 30.50% compared to the same period last year.

To achieve pre-pandemic levels, the airline requires around 489 movements to make this happen, although this is quite unlikely given the continued crisis in Ukraine.

Below is the last four weeks’ worth of data from the carrier:

What we can see from this data is that there is a decrease averaging at around 30% compared to the same period last year, which will not be good news for the carrier.

Could We See Numbers on the Rise?

Going into the long term, we could potentially see movement statistics rise exponentially, potentially even despite the Ukraine Crisis ongoing.

Back in September, the Russian national carrier signed a framework agreement worth over 16 billion dollars for 339 jets.

It will come as no surprise to read that the order has been placed with United Aircraft Corporation; UAC is a 92% owned subsidiary of a Russian state-owned aviation company, Rostec.

The aircraft order is made up of 210 MC-21s, a single aisle variant made by Irkut, 40 Tupolev Tu-214’s and 89 Sukhoi Superjet-NEWs.

The record-breaking deal that’s valued at a trillion roubles in the local currency well exceeds Aeroflot’s current fleet size of only 183 aircraft.

Denis Manturov, deputy head of the Russian government and acting minister for the industry, said:

“This deal will become the primary one for funding from the National Welfare Fund. The government will provide subsidies for procurement of indigenized versions of airplanes so as to freeze the acquisition prices for airlines to make sure our carriers would not experience additional financial burdens.”

The production of these planes will initially be expensive as the companies continue to source all components from within Russia, which they formerly sourced from the west as a result of sanctions imposed by the rest of the world in early 2022.

The government will help cover the initial costs of the aircraft from the federal budget, but as production increases, these subsidies will be reduced. 

Deliveries of the aircraft will commence in 2023, with the two Superjets and then 7 Tupolevs and 6 MC-21-310s coming in 2024.

The narrow-body MC-21 is set to become Aeroflot’s flagship as they move to detach themselves away from western manufacturers.

Overall…

It remains clear that Aeroflot is in quite the political quagmire at the moment, especially as sanctions continue to bite Russia.

That being said, if they are going to be receiving more aircraft than they already have in the long term, then we will definitely see movement numbers rise with this.

For now, all eyes are on Aeroflot to see how they can make this situation work for them, especially at a time when numbers are at an all-time low.