A series of technical problems continues to plague Russian air carriers, cut off from the ability to repair foreign aircraft and purchase spare parts for them.
On Monday, January 29, the engine of the S7 airliner, Russia’s largest private airline, broke down during a flight. According to reports, an Airbus A-320 plane that took off from Omsk with 170 passengers on board landed in Domodedovo. The plane was suspended from further flights.
The incident with the engine of the S7 airliner is the third in the last week. On January 27, two more airline planes were unable to take off due to similar faults. 160 people were supposed to fly from Ulan-Ude to Moscow, but the Boeing 737-800 never got off the ground: the pilots were forced to abort the takeoff due to surge in the left and right engines – a critical problem that could lead to the destruction of the aircraft in flight .
For the same reason, flight S7 from Moscow to Turkish Antalya did not take place. On the morning of January 27, at Domodedovo airport, a Boeing 737-800 aborted takeoff due to surge in one of the engines.
Previously, S7 had problems with aircraft maintenance, primarily with the repair of American P&W engines for the Airbus A320/A321neo, which technical organizations in Russia and Iran do not work with.
Since the beginning of the year, planes of Russian airlines have broken down during flights at least 14 times. In at least a third of cases, the culprit was the aircraft engine. Problems with it caused a disaster in Afghanistan, where a French Falcon crashed on a flight from India to Moscow. Investigators’ preliminary version is that both engines failed.
Another incident occurred on Monday with a Sukhoi Superjet 100, which was flying from Harbin, China. He made an emergency landing at Yakutsk airport after a fire sensor in the luggage compartment was activated.
Russia keeps struggling in civil aviation as a Yakutia Airlines Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft (in the video) made an emergency landing at Yakutsk airport due to smoke in the forward cargo area. Passengers and nine crew members were evacuated via emergency slides.#safety pic.twitter.com/JWUXKdmBfi
— FL360aero (@fl360aero) January 30, 2024
In January–November last year, according to the Federal Air Transport Agency, 670 serious aviation incidents occurred in Russia, of which 400, or 60%, were associated with aircraft failure. The problems are obvious: carriers cannot legally purchase original spare parts. And aviation authorities allow parts to be used longer than safety standards allow, which leads to accidents, points out Andrei Patrakov, head of RunAvia, a company specializing in flight safety.
