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TZUTC: 0200                  
In the first eight days of this month, eleven incidents involving passenger
aircraft occurred in Russian airspace, including onboard fires, decompression
and landing gear problems. This is reported by the Moscow Times. There may be
a connection with the fact that Russian aviation has been deprived of spare
parts since the beginning of last year as a result of the Western boycott.
 
The Moscow Times, an independent bilingual newspaper - which has been
operating from Amsterdam since 2022 due to censorship - published a list of
the incidents.
 
For example, an Airbus A319 from Rossiya Airlines lost pressure during the
flight on Friday, a fire broke out in an Aeroflot Boeing 777 due to a short
circuit on Wednesday and the left engine of an Aeroflot Airbus A321 failed on
December 2. In these and eight other cases, the pilots managed to land
successfully, but the number of incidents is high.
 
The list also includes problems with Russian-made aircraft.
 
There may be a connection with the general boycott that Western countries in
particular imposed on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Russians have since been deprived of parts in many areas, including
aviation. Russian airlines are also no longer allowed to fly to most European
airports and therefore mainly operate on domestic routes.
 
The media in Russia itself barely mentions the situation in aviation, because
President Putin's regime rejects all unwelcome reports.
 
Due to the lack of parts, the Russians have to improvise when maintaining
aircraft. They patch up old material or buy counterfeit parts elsewhere,
including in China, with all the risks that entails. A former Nordwind
Airlines pilot spoke to the British site AviationSource about "Russian
roulette" in this regard.
 
Besides, aviation in Russia was known as one of the most unsafe in the world
even before the war in Ukraine.

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