As western Europe and the US imposed sanctions last year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, civil aviation looked like a promising place to inflict maximum pain. Russian airlines, after all, fly jets mostly from Airbus SE and Boeing Co., which are barred from doing business in Russia. And more than two-fifths of those aircraft were owned by foreign leasing companies that immediately demanded their property back.
But one year into the war, Russian carriers are still operating 467 Airbus and Boeing jets, versus 544 a year ago, according to researcher Cirium. Although Russia’s airlines have eliminated flights to the US, western Europe and allied countries, they’ve ramped up service to Thailand, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, alongside former Soviet republics such as Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. And they fly about 1,100 daily domestic flights, down about 15% from a year earlier—a much smaller decline than Ukraine’s backers had expected after sanctions.
