February 15, 2023, 12:48 pm – BLiTZ – News Russian airlines, including the largest of them, Aeroflot, have asked the Federal Air Transport Agency and Rostransnadzor to allow them to carry out maintenance of foreign aircraft less frequently due to sanctions. What might such a decision lead to? Should we expect a new series of air crashes in Russia? These issues were explained to the BLiTZ by a former specialist of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), lawyer Pavel Gerasimov.

“The Federal Air Transport Agency just last week began issuing certificates for foreign service stations. Among other things, an agreement was signed between Aeroflot and one of the companies of the United Arab Emirates, which is engaged in the maintenance of passenger aircraft Airbus and Boeing. And the Federal Air Transport Agency, of course, gave a certificate for such a service, ”the expert said.

At the same time, there will be no change in the quality of service due to a change in the airline’s policy, Gerasimov believes. Maintenance of aircraft in the UAE is no different from the Russian Federation, since all service forms are still issued by manufacturers, plus there is a special manual for maintaining and maintaining the airworthiness of aircraft. Accordingly, one way or another, all these procedures will be performed.

“There is a question in terms of spare parts: now, as a rule, materials of secondary origin from third-party airlines are used. That is, in fact, they are second-hand ”

“The only thing that can be said, of course, is that there is an issue in terms of spare parts: now, as a rule, materials of secondary origin from third-party airlines are used. In other words, they are second-hand. But again, this is also a global practice, and this does not fundamentally affect flight safety if the aircraft parts are in a state of airworthiness, ”the DOS interlocutor explained.

Based on the foregoing, Gerasimov does not expect an increase in risks in terms of air transportation and considers all these actions to be quite logical and economically justified. According to him, each unit in aviation has its own resource – by flight time, by age or by the number of takeoff and landing operations. Accordingly, the use of used spare parts and components does not affect flight safety in any way, if this resource has not yet been exhausted.

“There is no risk that at least some service station with already exhausted resources will let us through, or that some counterfeit spare parts will penetrate the plane. All of them remained at the beginning of the 2000s, even before the global reform, ”the expert summed up.