- Aerospace
- Air finance
- Expert view
A380 incident highlights risks to aircraft visiting Russia
How many foreign-registered, and indeed lessor-managed, aircraft are at potential risk of being stranded in sanctioned countries?
Andrew Doyle, Senior Director – Market Development, Cirium
The potential operational and financial risks associated with flying aircraft into a heavily sanctioned country such as Russia were drawn into focus in late March when a water truck damaged the aft lower fuselage of a parked Airbus A380 at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport.
Luckily, this Emirates aircraft could be safely ferried back to its Dubai base four days later for repairs and was returned to revenue service two days after that.
However, this raised the question: how many foreign-registered – and indeed lessor-managed – aircraft are at potential risk of being stranded in sanctioned countries (or those on the US Office of Foreign Assets Control list), were they to sustain damage that could not easily be repaired in situ?
To find the answer I used Cirium tracked utilisation data together with our recently launched Asset Watch tool to identify foreign-operated and lessor-managed Airbus and Boeing widebodies which had visited Russian airports during the month of May, and how long they had spent on the ground there.
Altogether, 155 western-built passenger and cargo widebodies were flown into Russia during May by Central and East Asian, Middle Eastern and African airlines, logging a total of 963 visits and 2,940 hours of ground time.
Cirium fleet data showed that 55 of these widebodies were under management by 18 different lessors, accounting for 264 of the flights and 982 hours of ground time. Historical data suggests that statistically on an annual basis between two and three foreign-operated widebodies could be expected to sustain some level of damage while on the ground in Russia (assuming one incident per roughly 5,000 arrivals).
My first chart is a ‘tree map’ that breaks down the 155 aircraft cited above by master series, and ranks them by total hours of ground time spent at Russian airports during May, as well as listing the associated number of operators, lessors, flights and ground hours:
My second chart focuses on the subset of 55 tails under lease management, and shows how many times each visited a Russian airport during the month, and how much time that specific aircraft spent on the ground:
The full data set showing individual aircraft information including manager and flight-by-flight ground stays for all commercial aircraft worldwide can be accessed via Asset Watch.
LEARN MORE ABOUT ASSET WATCH WITH CIRIUM’S PRODUCT DEMONSTRATION. WATCH ON DEMAND.
You may also like …
SHOW MORE ARTICLES
A journey through the ISTAT Professional Development Program
November 2025
The ISTAT Professional Development Program (PDP) offers a deep dive exploration of the commercial aviation industry. Eleni Maragkou reflects on…
Royal Jordanian Airlines Achieves 95.39% On-Time Performance: Strategic Analysis of Middle East Success
October 2025
Royal Jordanian topped the Middle East and Africa rankings again in September with 95.39% on-time performance and a perfect 100%…
King Khalid International Airport
October 2025
King Khalid International Airport (RUH) was recognized as the Most On-Time Global Airport, achieving an industry-leading departure OTP rate of…
For the aircraft engine market, newer may not be better – yet
October 2025
New-generation engines are delivering greater efficiency, but also greater costs. Vanessa Gu recaps Cirium Ascend Consultancy’s latest webinar on the…
