Rosaviation banned six Russian carriers from flying to Europe

Rosaviation has enforced temporary restrictions on flights to Europe for six Russian air carriers. The restrictions apply to VIM-Avia, Dagestan Airlines, Tatarstan, Yakutia, Aviastar?TU and Utair Cargo. All of them have the increased flight safety index, which is calculated after checks by SAFA experts. The lower the safety index, the safer it is to use the airline. This was reported by RIA Novosti with reference to the head of Rosaviation, Alexander Neradko.

Dagestan Airlines have no regular flights to Europe. According to respective websites, Tatarstan operates services to Prague; and Yakutia has some destinations within the EU.

VIM-Avia announced that its flights to Europe will now be operated by their subsidiary company “Bashkortostan”.

According to the company’s website, “UTair Cargo” (which is a subsidiary of “UTair”) flies to Malta and Finland. “Aviastar-TU” has regular and charter cargo traffic to the EU, but there’s no information about passenger operations on the company’s website.

Alexander Neradko noted that it’s too early to talk about the duration of these restrictions. “It’s not about the speed of eliminating the drawbacks. What matters is the quality of work the companies will do to overcome their own problems and their eagerness to avoid such issues in the future”, - said the head of Rosaviation, without specifying the “issues”. He said that it’s “pretty embarrassing that our carriers act like little children, thinking their violations will stay unnoticed by the SAFA controllers”.

According to Mr. Neradko, if the carriers will show that their intentions are serious and if they manage to resolve all their problems, then Rosaviation might reconsider its verdict.