Aeroflot to spend US$300 million on replacing foreign IT products

:: Aeroflot

Aeroflot Group is planning to spend up to 28 billion roubles (some US$300 million) for replacing Western-developed IT products it uses with their locally developed alternatives, the group’s CEO Sergey Alexandrovsky revealed at the recent Digital Transportation Forum in Moscow. “Of this [amount], 10 billion roubles will be allocated to the relevant industrial competence centers for the purpose of creating products, which will then be available to other carriers,” he said.

According to the group’s recently published ESG-report, the Aeroflot airline alone has 80 IT import phase-out projects underway or on agenda, of which 58 were launched in 2023 and are at different stages of implementation. The entire group, which also includes carriers Rossiya and Pobeda, is on track to replace 131 imported IT product with local ones before the end of 2024.

This year Aeroflot will allocate almost 95 per cent of its entire IT budget to purchase of Russian-developed solutions, Alexandrovsky emphasized.

An important prerequisite for replacement is that the new, locally-made product should be more advanced than the imported one it replaces. One of the success stories in this regard is the rapid migration into domestic passenger service system Leonardo PSS.

“In the shortest amount of time tremendous work was done. We strive to get the most leading edge and competitive solution on the international market. So we implemented over 800 upgrades,” he explained.

With support from the Russian Ministry of transportation, Aeroflot was the first to move into the new aviation service platform, which is now used by 56 airports, 17 Russian airlines and 19 carriers outside Russia.

Aeroflot is now working on replacing the Sabre FPM flight-plan management software and aircraft MRO software AMOS.

By replacing Sabre FPM the airline estimates to achieve from two to five per cent fuel savings and a 20 to 30 per cent time saving on routing operations, as well as reduce its time spent on flight plan management by 30 per cent.

Implementation of Russian revenue management system is expected to generate at least 3 billion roubles of ancillary revenues.

The Swiss AMOS will be replaced by Russian continued airworthiness platform Kupol. “This software is a must for any airline, and already in the early stages of implementation we realize, how much more efficient it proves to be – from reducing time to more precise forecasting and reducing aircraft grounding time,” head of Aeroflot said.

Along with that, the airline is transitioning onto Russian tablets with Aurora OS, which replace iPad Mini with SITA software installed on them, which were previously used for passenger service onboard aircraft, after the Swiss provider suspended all operations in Russia in the summer of 2023. Aeroflot crews are already using 7,400 Russian-made tablets in flight. This year 9,000 Russian-made tablets Fplus Т1100 with Aurora OS will be purchased for cabin crews and ground staff. Next year 3,400 tablets with local OS and software will be acquired for flight crews.

Another initiative within this effort is a transition from German asset management system SAP to Russian 1C ERP and the group is now developing its own operational platform and crew management system instead of the imported solutions it used earlier.

In 2027 – 2028 Aeroflot aircraft will be equipped with Wi-Fi connectivity provided by Russian satellite constellation, according to the contract signed in May this year with Russian company Bureau 1440. Head of the company Alexey Shelobkov told the audience of the Digital Transportation Forum, that the constellation will consist of over 250 satellites and will provide wideband access to internet with world-wide reach. The connectivity between satellites and ground stations has already been tested, within two test missions conducted in 2023 and 2024. Now the company is seeking to procure government financial support for the full-scale launch of the constellation.