Aeroflot no longer offers inflight entertainment

Sanctions hit again, no more in-flight entertainment

Aeroflot said in a statement on its Telegram channel that the foreign company had stopped offering streaming services. The airline claims the disruption will only be temporary and passengers will be fine to do a digital detox, nap or read a book during the flight. Aeroflot said it was working to resolve the issue domestically.

Photo: Getty Images.

The airline industry has been one of the hardest hit by Russia’s sanctions following the Kremlin’s military invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions forced Aeroflot to suspend all international flights after the European Union, Britain and the United States banned Russian aircraft from their airspace. Further sanctions now prevent Russia from buying spare aircraft parts and technology.

Aeroflot continues to struggle

In October, Simple Flying reported that Aeroflot’s passenger numbers were still down due to the sanctions. Airfares have soared and fuel prices have risen sharply, leading to fewer passengers. The decline in Russian passenger numbers has been going on for several months. The first nine months of 2022 are down 8.2% compared to 2021, when air traffic was already down due to the impact of the COVID pandemic.

While much of the world is struggling to recover from the massive COVID pandemic, Russia has decided to go to war. The aftermath of the war between Russia and Ukraine is evident all over the world, but nothing compares to the loss of life. Before the war, Aeroflot rebounded faster than the rest of the world due to its large domestic market. But now, lack of access to maintenance and spare parts has interrupted that growth.

Photo: Getty Images.

Since Aeroflot was unable to receive new foreign aircraft, they were forced to devise alternative solutions. One solution is to bring in new aircraft from Russian manufacturer Rostec, which has promised to deliver a large number of them. The transition to operating Russian-made aircraft means that Russia will need 3,500 new pilots.

“Assume we will need an additional 3,500 pilots to expand our fleet with domestic aircraft.” – Sergey Aleksandrovsky

The country must also build eight flight simulators to train new pilots.

Russian air traffic continues to drop

The latest data show that Russia’s October air traffic down 25% year-on-year. Russian airlines carried 8.25 million passengers in October and a year-to-date total of 81 million, according to Rosstat. As mentioned above, Russia’s air traffic in the first nine months of this year fell by 8.2% compared to the same period last year, while the figure for the first ten months fell by 14.3% compared to the first ten months of 2021. The hardest-hit airline is Aeroflot, which will carry 1 million fewer passengers in the first ten months of 2022 than it did in the same period last year.