China has banned Russian-operated Boeing and Airbus airliners from its airspace, citing safety concerns. More than 100 state-of-the-art airliners, most of them owned by Western leasing companies, are in the hands of Russian airlines and some have been re-registered in Russia. All of them have been banned from getting service or parts from countries that are sanctioning the country for its invasion of Ukraine. According to multiple reports based on a single Russian news source, China doesn’t want to violate ICAO regulations by allowing aircraft with unknown maintenance and ownership status fly over or to its territory. The Chinese government hasn’t commented.
According to the report, China asked all carriers who use its airspace for an update on ownership of their airplanes and other details, and Russia didn’t respond. China is reportedly walking a thin line by trying to avoid taking a position on the invasion while keeping business ties with the West.
Maybe the Russians should change the name of its airline … AeroFlop ?
Good – sanctions are a slow game, but they do have effects eventually.
Russia is scrambling to return retired airliners to service and finish new ones, including replace ‘western’ components with Russian ones including engines.
It has much air travel within the vast country.
Several governments have seized or frozen literally hundreds of billions worth of Russian assets. Those assets should be used to pay the aircraft leasing companies for the planes Russia has stolen or impounded. Simple solution but probably complicated. The same should go for all the destruction of Ukrainian property.
Yes.
But it requires complete defeat of Russia in some way, preferably explicit recognition by it that its society erred.
Otherwise aggressive ambitions and blaming others will continue, as it did in Weimar Germany after WWI, which fostered the rise of Nationalsozialistiche leading to WWII.
Russia never had a partially democratic society – Marxists shot the first elected legislative assembly as the Czar began to relax. Putin comes out of Marxism in action – he was a KGB official, whose activities included false-flag terrorism. He is obsessed with his version of history which is to take back former USSR pieces like Ukraine.
China is concerned for the safety of their people and not breaking trade treaties?
I’m not buying their sudden altruistic conversion.
Something else is at play here.
CC’s airline safety record is not bad, I gather.
They have been keeping some pressure on Russia over the war on Ukraine, recently some surprising strong statements against the war, perhaps to mollify US on trade.
While they sabre rattle against Taiwan and everyone around seas in the area.