Euronews Russian

Starting in 2027, travellers would pay 500 roubles on domestic routes and 1,000 on international ones to help cover the leasing and operation of 258 Russian-built planes, as sanctions over Moscow's all-out war in Ukraine keep squeezing the sector.

Russia wants to add a fee to airline tickets from 2027 to prop up its ailing civil aircraft programme. Domestic passengers would pay 500 roubles (€5.4) per ticket and international passengers 1,000 roubles (€10.8), according to the State Duma's budget and tax committee.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade is drafting the measure on President Vladimir Putin's orders. The money would pay for leasing and operating 258 aircraft under the Comprehensive Programme for Expanding the Production of Aircraft, a list that includes the MS-21, Tu-214, SJ-100 and Il-114-300.

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia's civil aircraft industry has not delivered a single new serial aircraft, and it has missed production deadline after production deadline.

Between 2022 and 2025, Russian airlines received 13 new aircraft against a plan of 120. Many of those were put together from parts stockpiled before sanctions hit.

The schedule has been rewritten more than once. In summer 2026, the target for large-scale production slipped from 2030 to 2035.

Certification and the start of serial production for the MS-21 and SJ-100 are now set for 2027. Deliveries of the Il-114-300, which has cleared certification, are promised from December 2026.

Russia's airline fleet has shrunk over the course of the war as ageing foreign-built planes are retired and nothing replaces them. Spare parts are hard to find and cost more and more, and Russia has turned to Vietnam to lease aircraft.

Western sanctions imposed after the February 2022 invasion cut Russia off from buying or leasing Western aircraft and from getting spare parts or maintenance services.

Moscow responded with a law letting airlines re-register more than 400 foreign-leased Western aircraft at home instead of handing them back to their owners.

International aviation law bans dual registration of the same aircraft, so Russia's re-registrations are illegal. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), however, has no enforcement mechanism to force the planes' return.

Lessors have filed insurance claims worth around $8 billion (€7.1bn) to recover their losses. Many of those cases are still running.

Before the full-scale invasion, about 850 of Russia's 900 commercial aircraft were Boeing or Airbus planes built in the US and Europe. Around 85% of them were leased from foreign companies.

With Western spare parts and technical services now sanctioned, airlines have been stripping the seized fleet for components.

The core of Russia's aerospace production has since moved toward military aircraft. Official output figures are classified, but industry observers put production in the dozens per year.

Source: euronews.com