Shortage of spare parts and maintenance: the Russian aircraft fleet is on the verge of collapse

Passenger air travel in Russia is rapidly declining due to Western sanctions, which has caused a significant increase in ticket prices and a decrease in the number of passengers.

This is evidenced by data from the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.

One of the key reasons for the crisis is the ban on Russian airlines from accessing Boeing and Airbus service centers. As a result, aircraft maintenance is carried out under the “parallel import” scheme, which has increased its cost by 38%.

According to intelligence, about half of Russia’s Airbus fleet is currently idle. In particular, S7 has 31 of its 39 A320/321 aircraft on the ground.

The infrastructure situation is also very difficult: since the beginning of 2025 alone, Russian airports have completely stopped operating 455 times, and flights have been redirected to alternative airfields 736 times. Airline losses due to the aviation collapse between July 5 and 7 exceeded $250 million.

Due to financial difficulties, airlines are forced to pass on additional costs to passengers, which only deepens the crisis. The average cost of a ticket to Russian resort areas in 2025 reached almost $400 – this is 12.5% more than last year, and is expected to grow by another 15%. As a result, passenger traffic is forecast to decrease by at least 7%.

The country’s aircraft industry has also been hit by problems. Even aircraft in production or testing have risen in price by 45–70% of their original cost. Losses in the civil aircraft fleet could reach 50–100 units per year, and a complete collapse of the industry is expected by 2027.

By the way, the collapse of civil aviation in Russia, which occurred on July 5-6, could have caused losses of up to 20 billion rubles to the Russian economy.

Recall that inflation in Russia in the first week of July reached 0.79%, which was a record weekly increase since the spring of 2022 – that’s when prices skyrocketed amid panic about the economic crisis and the devaluation of the ruble. During periods of active inflation acceleration at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, weekly growth did not exceed 0.5%.

As reported, the war against Ukraine, sanctions, and increased spending on the military-industrial complex have led to an increase in prices for basic food products in Russia.

In addition, ordinary Russians are massively defaulting on their credit card debts . Payments on 8.3 million credit cards are overdue for more than three months.

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