June 27, 2024 in an interview with regime propagandists, Belavia CEO Igor Cherginets stated that "against the backdrop of Western sanctions, we successfully manage to resolve issues with spare parts and components for airplanes, as well as to ensure flight safety.".
However, according to the information BELPOLBelavia's prospects are far from certain. not rosy.
The official documents we have in our possession indicate that imminent collapse of the Belarusian aviation industry due to the impossibility of fleet renewal.
В May 2024 so-called "ministry of transportation and communications" reported on the fulfillment of the assignments given by March 7, 2024 at a meeting "working group to develop measures to protect the national interests of the Republic of Belarus in the conditions of sanctions imposed by the EU and the USA".
According to the report, Belavia's air fleet, formed during the period of 2003-2020 from the western airplanes Boeing, Embraer и SRJand requires regular updating and maintenance.
The imposed sanctions have made it much more difficult to maintain the airworthiness of these aircraft and made it virtually impossible to acquire new ones.
Despite Belavia's and the Department of Aviation's efforts to procure aircraft of the following brands Boeing, Airbus и Embraer, requests of the Belarusian side were ignoredor returned on the condition 100% prepaid in US dollarswhich threatened to freeze the transferred funds. Moreover, Belavia does not have such funds, and the calculation was for the purchase of airplanes in leasing.
However, this venture also failed. More 70 inquiries for aircraft leasing have also been unsuccessful, leasing companies refused to cooperate with Belavia. The situation is catastrophic, to put it mildly, but to complete the picture it is worth mentioning the company's other endeavors.
"Belavia approached the owners used airplanes в Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, UAE, Turkey, Singapore, Uzbekistan и Mongolia with offers to purchase them, but was turned down for fear of cooperating with a sub-sanctioned company..
China, in its turn, offered Belavia aircraft of its own production, the so-called narrow-body medium-range passenger airplanes. However, Belarussian airline refused this offer because of the high cost of Chinese airplanes. Besides, the engines and many other components in these airplanes are Western-made, which will also lead to maintenance problems due to Western sanctions.
Attempts to acquire Russian airplanes (that are still being planned for mass production) are still at the discussion stage. Their delivery under the most favorable circumstances is possible not earlier than 2027and that's only if you sign the contract now.
But Belavia management is in no hurry to sign a contract with the Russian side because of the obviously overpriced airplanes:
- the price of the MS-21-310 of the Yakovlev Corporation is about 120 million US dollars;
- the price of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 - US$65 million.
For comparison, if it were not for the "non-working sanctions", the purchase of leasing of Western obviously more qualitative and reliable "analogs" would have cost Belavia more than half the price.
In addition, the lack of funds and reluctance of Russian leasing companies to work with Belavia aggravate the already deadlocked situation. In addition, the Russian-made airplanes do not meet the declared flight characteristics, which makes them practically useless for the planned destinations to the India, China, UAE и Egypt.
For example, during the pilot production of the first copies of the MS-21-310 passenger airplane, its real mass turned out to be on 6.5 tons more, projected (due to the replacement of imported engines and components with Russian "analogs"), which entailed Reduction of the actual flight range to 3,000 km and its maximum altitude to 7 kmIt is not possible to perform non-stop flights on the above routes.
Thus, the situation in which the "Belaviait looks like extremely difficult and almost hopelesswhich is in sharp contrast to the optimistic statements of Cherginets. In fact, the document with the stamp "for official use" confirms our words. This information is also another striking indicator of the work of sanctions.
Zhyve Belarus!