Aeroflot promotes initiative towards harmonization of Russia’s continued airworthiness system with international standards

:: Aeroflot Technics

After successfully fostering implementation of a crucial ACMI initiative in Russia last year, Aeroflot, Russia’s leading airline proposed an initiative, which can potentially help to normalize country’s relations with the ICAO.

Speaking at the reсent trade event NAIS-25 in Moscow, Aeroflot’s COO Andrey Semenov emphasized that Russia needs to adapt its continued airworthiness regulations and practices in a way that would be coherent and harmonized with ICAO principles, including the independent audit procedure.

On March 1, the newest edition of Russia’s federal rules regulating aircraft maintenance (FAP-145) is replacing the outdated FAP-120 and FAP-109. The main principle behind introduction of FAP-145 is harmonization of maintenance and production organizations’ operations with the internationally recognized practices.

This is by all means a great news for the industry – but this development alone is not enough. It is equally crucial to design a new set of detailed rules and requirements for aircraft continued airworthiness, Aeroflot believes.

“It would be right to continue [on the same track] and in this respect reach complete conformity with the international legislation. This would facilitate communication and re-establishment of healthy relations with ICAO, since we’ll be speaking the same language,” –Andrey Semenov said. He explained, that the new rules will create the institution of independent audit of aircraft and their airworthiness status. Having such audit run by expert inspectors, who have real experience with both western-built and modern Russian aircraft, will improve the transparency of the oversight process. “So, the recommendation to extend the aircraft’s continued airworthiness certificate would be issued on the premises that all critical non-compliances would have been fixed,” Andrey Semyonov explained.

Such a practice of airworthiness inspections of western-built aircraft operated in Russia was well integrated in the country until 2022, with audits carried out by independent experts approved by the aviation authorities of the respective jurisdictions of aircraft registration (Bermuda Civil Aviation Authority and Irish Aviation Authority).

The discussion of bringing the national continued airworthiness system in line with international standards has been ongoing for two decades. Industry experts pointed to this issue as one of the key preconditions for transferring the fleet of Russian airlines into the Russian register long time ago. According to Chicago Convention a national register undertakes the responsibility and carries the function of defining the standards for flight operations, aircraft continued airworthiness, crew licensing and oversight of how these standards are implemented, whereby the acceptable level of safety is achieved.  

A reform of the continued airworthiness system would make aircraft operation in Russia more transparent for owners and investors, preserve the market value and liquidity of aircraft after their leasing terms expire, and for their subsequent lease to other countries.

In 2022 the majority of aircraft operated in Russia was transferred to the national register, as foreign registers withdrew their airworthiness certificates. Thus, the responsibility to inspect the airworthiness of some 600 additional aircraft was imposed on the national authorities – Rosaviatsiya (Federal Agency of Air Transport) and Rostransnadzor (Federal Service for Transport Oversight).

Resuming the practice of independent audits in compliance with ICAO standards will help many Russian airlines to launch new international routes. In 2024 it was the international segment, which drove the traffic growth for Russian airlines, having surged by 15 per cent to nearly 27 million passengers.

Aeroflot Group registered an even higher growth rate of 32.7 per cent on international routes. The group’s airlines operate flights to 19 countries, but there’s still a significant potential for growth.