[cwoodward]

Russia airlines are unlikely to have any aircraft to operate from end March as nearly 90% of their fleets are leased from major foreign leasing companies based in the EU or UK and the aircraft are going to need to be returned to the leasers.
This however poses the questions of how are the owners going to recover the some 950 aircraft and once/if recovered what will they do with them ?

The below from:-
Reuters)
The European Union on Sunday gave leasing companies until March 28 to wind up current rental contracts in Russia, presenting lessors with a major new headache hard on the heels of crises over Boeing 737 MAX safety and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aircraft leasing firms are set to terminate hundreds of leases with Russian airlines following Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine that give the sector a month to act.

Dublin-based AerCap (AER.N), the world’s biggest aircraft leasing company, saw its New York-listed shares tumble 12.7% after it said it would cease leasing activity with Russian carriers, while U.S.-based Air Lease (AL.N) fell almost 8%.

Russian airlines have 980 passenger jets in service, of which 777 are leased, according to analytics firm Cirium.

Of these, two-thirds, or 515 jets, with an estimated market value of about $10 billion, are rented from foreign firms.

AerCap said that by net book value, 5% of its fleet was leased in Russia as of Dec. 31. The company, which recently strengthened its leadership of the specialist aviation leasing industry by buying rival GECAS, has the largest exposure to Russia and Ukraine with 152 planes, consultancy IBA said.

Its Russian clients include Aeroflot, S7 Airlines, Rossiya, Azur Air and Ural Airlines, its website showed, involving aircraft worth an estimated $2.5 billion, according to aviation services firm ACC Aviation.

Lessor BOC Aviation (2588.HK) said it had 18 planes representing 4.5% of its owned fleet based in Russia. It also manages one other plane.

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) has at least three Russian airline customers, including Aeroflot, according to its website. The Dubai-owned lessor did not respond to a request for comment.

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Bullfrog, PatJordan, Frederic, AMcWhirter

[MartynSinclair]

For me the re routings are not the issue, it is more about whether the flights will go or not.

This week is a European trip which is my 3rd attempt since November for meetings in France – and at the end of the month it is Asia (outbound European stop, inbound m/e stop). I accept Russia / Ukraine is a no go area, but Airlines are free to cancel flights (understandably or not) at very short notice.

From a non political – non economic – non religious, standpoint – I have an absolute lack of understanding, why one nearly 70 year old billionaire, has the ultimate power and desire, to kill indiscriminately. It is a nightmare seen only in the fiction of James Bond and Mission Impossible, come to life…. and the western world appears totally impotent to help.

Apologies to my fellow Forum readers.. if anyone is offended by my post….

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dutchyankee, Bullfrog, PatJordan, Inquisitive, BugAdvisor, Jacob, FaroFlyer, Frederic, PeterCoultas, AMcWhirter, cwoodward

[K1ngston]

Like others have mentioned whilst what is happening is devastating for the Ukrainians, I will keep this post travel related, my husband and I are flying to the UK this August and currently we are flying to the UK via Helsinki so from what I can see and read about Finnair have decided on their routing and they will fly an extra 90 minutes to get to their hub in Finland from Singapore.

Coming back we are supposed to be routing via Haneda in Tokyo on JAL and am I right in thinking that currently JAL have suspended all their flights to Europe? I am hoping of course that things will change but after 2.5 years of not being able to travel due to other things, we now have to wait and see how what is happening in Ukraine is panning out!

Just a further point, you may be asking why we are traveling such a convoluted routing effectively SIN – LHR? Well I have over 500K Asia Miles accrued through flying CX etc, there is no way I am booking with them simply due to the restriction in HKG, so I had to look at other routings, and I tried getting direct routes but there are NO air mile redemptions for most of the year and especially not at the time we need to travel so I had to look at mixing and matching, luckily we are flying J class on all sectors which was a pre requisite and we were looking forward to a couple of days in Tokyo on our way back but this is again is not guaranteed.

To close my heart and thoughts go out to everyone suffering in Ukraine …….

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Bullfrog, TimothyTanks, GivingupBA

[cwoodward]

K1ngston
Not sure if this assists –

JAL has been flying ex HDA to LHR daily with a 777 -Flt 43 ETD 11.30am ETA 06-10 AM. Todays flight left at 11.46 am
It appears to be a passenger flight

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Bullfrog, K1ngston

[AMcWhirter]

[quote quote=1205582]K1ngston
Not sure if this assists –

JAL has been flying ex HDA to LHR daily with a 777 -Flt 43 ETD 11.30am ETA 06-10 AM. Todays flight left at 11.46 am
It appears to be a passenger flight[/quote]

You must have missed the piece I posted on Friday.

There’s a route map shown towards the end.

The JAL flight last Friday arrived into LHR just over 20 mins early.

KLM joins Air France in serving Northeast Asia via Kazakhstan

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Polly, Bullfrog

[EasternPedlar]

[postquote quote=1205541]

Russia has said that it will nationalise the assets of companies leaving the country. Not sure if this means that they will seize these aircraft. I can’t see them being handed back quite so easily. The lack of spares will of course become a problems in due course, but they could keep going with cannibalisation for quite a while.

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Polly

[IanFromHKG]

K1ngston, HK is lifting its transit ban in a week or so:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-22/hong-kong-airport-to-lift-ban-on-transit-passengers-from-april-1

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Polly, K1ngston

[karehhai7]

JAL has been flying ex HDA to LHR daily with a 777 -Flt 43 ETD 11.30am ETA 06-10 AM.

[AMcWhirter]

[postquote quote=1233705]

Yes I covered the subject of how airlines avoid Russian airspace back in March 2022.

Make an online search for “How airlines are avoiding Russian airspace.”

JAL returned to London around that time. ANA restarted its London flights last July.

BA will resume Tokyo Haneda next week as we have already reported.

What I find interesting is that Tokyo-London flights take a northerly routing over Alaska but route London-Tokyo using a southerly track over Kazakhstan and then across mainland China to Japan. This adds another two to three hours to the elapsed flight time depending on weather conditions along the way.

[Author]

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