Russia begs Kazakhstan for civilian aircraft

The Russian authorities are asking so-called "friendly" countries to assist with aircraft for organizing domestic passenger flights within Russia due to the threat of an aircraft shortage for domestic carriers.

Due to international sanctions, Russian airlines are running out of their own aircraft resources. Even the foreign airliners illegally appropriated by Russia through leasing are quickly "wearing out" due to excessive use and a lack of spare parts for proper maintenance.

Therefore, the Russian Ministry of Transport has reached out to several airlines in Kazakhstan for assistance. However, as reported by the Kazakh news agency BaigeNews.kz, the largest airline in Kazakhstan, Air Astana, refused to provide services for the Russian domestic aviation market due to the risk of sanctions being imposed on Air Astana.

“Thus, Russia turned to another Kazakh airline, Qazaq Air, which mainly operates domestic flights.”

The risks for Qazaq Air are smaller since the company itself is relatively small, but even it hesitates to lease its aircraft to Russia, offering instead so-called cabotage flights, where a foreign airline operates flights between locations within another country.

Qazaq Air can take on such a risk, but only if Canada overlooks this commercial deal. Why Canada? Qazaq Air’s fleet consists of De-Havilland Dash 8-Q400 twin-engine turboprop passenger planes for short- and medium-range routes, manufactured by the Canadian company Bombardier Aerospace. The only risk for Kazakhstan's Qazaq Air is being cut off from new spare parts for its aircraft from Canada.

It has also become known that the Russian Ministry of Transport made a similar request for assistance to the Uzbek airline Uzbekistan Airways.

This is what Russia’s Colossus on clay feet looks like today.

Source

About the author. Rostyslav Demchuk, journalist, expert on Euro-Atlantic issues.

The editors don't always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.