Aeroflot is seeking an insurance settlement for its entire foreign fleet; depends on money - CEO

ST. PETERSBURG. June 7 (Interfax) - Aeroflot is committed to an insurance settlement for its entire foreign aircraft fleet, but it is a matter of adequate funds, company CEO Sergei Alexandrovsky said.

"We have completed everything we planned to do in 2023. Insurance regulation affected almost half of the Aeroflot group's fleet, and the amount of the insurance settlement totaled 270 billion rubles, of which 15 billion rubles were from Aeroflot. We are continuing to work," Alexandrovsky told reporters on the sidelines of SPIEF-2024.

"I hope there will be results this year as well," he said. "The ideal scenario is when insurance regulation affects the entire fleet. But this is a question, of course, of sufficient advance funds and so on."

Russian authorities allocated almost 300 billion rubles from the National Wealth Fund (NWF) last year for insurance settlements on aircraft leased from foreign companies. The funds were allocated for 15 years at 1.5%. The scheme assumed that, as a result of the settlement, the airlines would renew contracts for the same aircraft with a Russian lessor (subordinate to the Federal Air Transport Agency). A fleet "cleared" of foreign registration can be used on foreign flights without the risk of arrest.

In fact, the money was spent on transactions for aircraft for Aeroflot (101 units), S7 (45), Ural Airlines (19), and Aurora (5). They were partially financed from the carriers' own funds.

According to the Aeroflot website, at the end of April this year, the group's fleet (which combines the company of the same name, Pobeda and Rossiya) consisted of 349 aircraft, including 59 wide-body and 212 narrow-body medium-haul Boeing and Airbus aircraft, as well as 78 domestic regional SuperJet 100 planes.