In early March it was announced that Aeroflot would be suspending international flights. Well, the airline will shortly be bringing back international flights, but it’ll look nothing like pre-pandemic.
Aeroflot’s new Sochi international hub
Starting April 7, 2022, Aeroflot will begin operating international flights out of Sochi (AER), with tickets now on sale. The airline will fly from Sochi to 17 destinations in six countries. Those countries will include Armenia, Egypt, Israel, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan.
Sochi isn’t exactly a huge market, so these flights will be focused on transit passengers, and in particular those traveling from Moscow, Saint Petersburg, etc.
These flights will operated by Rossiya Airlines, which is a subsidiary of Aeroflot. Rossiya will be using Russian-built Sukhoi Superjet 100s for for these flights, with 10 of these planes expected to be based at the airport. All of these planes used to fly for Aeroflot, but were transferred over to the carrier’s subsidiary as part of a transformation plan initially announced in 2020.
The airline plans to see how these routes do, and then adjust its network accordingly.
Aeroflot’s interesting logic for a Sochi hub
While Aeroflot will no longer be flying Airbus A350s to Miami, you can fly a Sukhoi Superjet to Aktobe. What exactly is going on here, and why is Aeroflot bringing back international flights in this way?
Well, Aeroflot ended up suspending international flights for a couple of reasons:
- The first issue is that many countries started banning Russian airlines from their airspace, which limits the destinations the airline can fly to
- Much more significant is that many aircraft operated by Russian airlines are owned by foreign leasing companies, and sanctions mean that these planes are at risk of being seized; Putin has essentially authorized Russian airlines to steal these aircraft, but they can only be flown domestically
How does that explain Aeroflot starting international flights out of Sochi?
- The Sukhoi Superjets are built in Russia and aren’t owned by foreign leasing companies, so clearly Aeroflot feels it can fly these planes without risk of them being seized internationally, especially since the countries getting flights are largely allies of Russia
- The challenge is that the Sukhoi Superjet isn’t exactly a very capable plane, and has a range of just ~1,800 miles
- Sochi is in south of Russia, and most of the airspace open to Russia is to the south of the country, so this lets the airline operate to these destinations within the range of the aircraft; for example, Sochi to Cairo is ~1,030 miles, while Moscow to Cairo is ~1,800 miles, with the latter being beyond the practical range of the Sukhoi Superjet
While this will work for some amount of time, there is one major challenge in the long run. While the Sukhoi Superjet is built in Russia, many of the parts are from foreign countries. With sanctions in place, Russia won’t have access to many spare parts.
You can expect that the airline will essentially have to use some planes for spare parts, and over time the fleet will get smaller and smaller.
Bottom line
Aeroflot subsidiary Rossiya will be resuming international flights as of early April, flying to 17 destinations in six countries. Specifically, the airline is setting up a hub in Sochi, and will fly Sukhoi Superjets to select countries without sanctions against Russia.
The logic here is that Sukhoi Superjets aren’t being leased from foreign companies. However, given the plane’s limited range, setting up a hub in Sochi makes the most sense, since it’s closer to many of the destinations that will be served.
What do you make of Aeroflot’s strategy for resuming international flights?
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