Rossiya Will Acquire British Airways 747s!

Wow. The largest operators of the passenger 747. Makes you wonder how they can make it work and others can’t - even in some specific routes.

As long as the cost of jet fuel remains low, it makes sense to buy inefficient but cheap aircraft. Perhaps an intended consequence is that global warming is breaking up the Arctic ice, and Russian shipping can operate year-round.

Agree with your assessment, finally we’ll see BA First appropriately marketed as business class

Thanks for reporting on this Ben - it's quite interesting to see that the 747's times might not necessarily be over :)) Surely (when Russia opens its borders to others than UK, Turkey and Switzerland) I will take on this opportunity. I have a lot of memories connected with this plane, especially back in my college period when we at SK have still operated with 747-283... it would be sad to see it phased out altogether

At least seven “Queens” will live on with another airline. I have a Russian visa. Dah !

Please go to Russia, support Putin and enjoy a one way ticket to a Siberian Gulag... It would be a fantastic 10 years review

This airline is pure trash. The fleet is falling apart, the service is almost non-existent.
If you want to have a TAAG Angola experience again, then go for it.

@Rafael - go away with this racist comment. There are more prisoners per capita in USA than in Russia. You'd better also compare the safety ranking of both countries - there are not even close as many mass shootings in Russia as there are on the other side "of the pond".

Why is this still not deleted? If Rafael made fun of blacks, George Floyd (or any other black-skin criminal), Chinese, Mexicans or muslims he would be considered racist and dealt with in a rapid manner - when he insults Russians ot other Europeans, it's not racism anymore...

They'll need to do a reconfig as at least some of these are 14F / 86J "hi-J" models which wouldn't make sense on these leisure routes

I could imagine them keeping the upper deck and maybe F in the nose and then economy all the way though or maybe maintaining a PE section. You'd imagine that BA would be willing to sell them the left over Y seats from the scrapped examples

The way that Gmail truncated the subject line of my notification email was attention-getting ... all I could see was "Yay: Rossiya Will Acquire British Airways"

Looks like both Donald Trump (Air Force One) and Rossiya have purchased 747s belonging to defunct Transaero. Small ripples can send out waves lasting many years.

I disagree with Vanya...yes part of the ex-Transaero fleet (so some of the 777s and 747s) are quite old, but overall Rossiya isn’t bad, and these ex-BA 747s (with their much more modern interior hard product) will only improve it further. This move of purchasing more 747s actually does make sense - despite Aeroflot Group’s long-term plan having Rossiya fly mostly Russian-built aircraft, Aeroflot is also planning to become much more premium-oriented. This leaves many routes that don’t justify the kind of premium service it’s planning to provide, which means Rossiya has to grow its widebody fleet to back-fill capacity that Aeroflot drops as it shrinks and reinvents itself as a very premium carrier. Fantastic news, and I look forward on going 747-hunting and trying to get on as many Rossiya 747 flights as possible!

Airborne troop ships.

That red rash on the back half of the fuselage .... that's a symptom of Novichok poisoning.

I'm actually really excited about this. I love BAs 747s, would definitely go the 'long way' to fly one of them again

We Russians are counting on Trump getting re-elected (rather than him heading to prison). It's so exciting! I can assure you that we will have some small part in the election's "outcome" and we are so looking forward to all the fun! Stay tuned for the exciting finale of Season 4 this winter. You will be AMAZED at what we have lined up for you!!!

from Russia with Love,
- Oleg

We had so much fun watching the Rossiya 747 land from the beach at Phuket International. Excellent plane-geek moment. Standing in line at immigration at the same time as hundreds of Russians arriving on one of those planes, not so much.

Good borscht can be had in Phuket btw.

Was definitely wondering what might happen to the windfall of 747's hitting the used market. Not surprising to see an airline pick them up and I wonder if there will be more. Do you think it's possible that many retired passenger 747's will be converted into freighters? Also, I wonder if someone will pick up the 777's that Delta is retiring.

Most pax 747-400s have no future as freighters. Floor reinforcing to handle cargo would be far too costly.

Rossiya flies the 747 from Moscow to Cyprus in the peak summer season, which is about a 4 hour flight.

Most interesting, Ben. I look forward to your future comments about these ex-B.A. 747's once they have started operating with Rossiya and whether any significant changes are made by them to the interior of these aircraft before putting them into service.
'Mac'

Ah, too bad it's a false alarm. I would've given Rossiya another go if one had been placed on the SVO-VVO route, just for giggles. Generally, I am not a fan of Rossiya, and flying them once was enough for me. I'll stick with trusty Aeroflot!

I just got word from a Russian friend that the original post (in Russian, on planespotters) got translated and distributed widely, but that the director of Rossiya denies this. There is only one actual "source", the rest being repeats of the source.