West Sanctions Russian Aviation, But Moscow Decides to Keep Planes Flying Despite Risks
(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – Steven E. Harris – Oct. 26, 2023)
Steven E. Harris is professor of modern Russian and European history at the University of Mary Washington. He is presently writing a book on the history of Aeroflot and authoritarianism in the Russian Jet Age from Stalin to Putin.
That said, the IAC source base is the most systematic we have. Keeping in mind the potential for the politicization of its conclusions, what does a critical reading of its data alongside other sources suggest? First, fatal crashes in commercial and general aviation actually decreased in Russia from 18 in 2021 to 13 in 2022, and related deaths decreased from 70 to 24. Data for the first half of 2023 points in the same direction, with six fatal crashes and nine deaths. This trend was likely helped by the 14% decline in traffic after February 2022. While so many fatal crashes sound substantial, all but three in 2021 and all but one in 2022 involved small aircraft under 5,700 kilograms, not the jetliners we associate with most commercial flying.
Absolute figures on crashes and deaths capture headlines but they don’t say much about safety without considering their relation to passengers flown or departures. According to the IAC, the rate of aviation accidents and the rate of fatal crashes per one million departures both increased from 2020 to 2021 but then decreased in 2022. The IAC does not single out Russia from other post-Soviet states for this metric. But since Russia has the largest aviation sector among those countries, these data suggest that its aviation safety has not dramatically worsened since early 2022. Indeed, even critics who argue that Russian airlines are less safe partly because of sanctions conclude that “2022 and 2023 were also good years for airline safety [in Russia] compared to 2021.”
Comparisons with the U.S. similarly suggest that passenger aviation is not as disastrous as some headlines suggest. The IAC data indicates that Russia and other post-Soviet states are usually but not always behind the U.S. in passenger aviation safety. In 2018, for example, IAC countries reported a 0.8 rate of fatal crashes per 1 million departures of passenger aircraft above 5,700 kilograms. Comparable statistics from the National Transportation Safety Board showed a 0.11 rate for that year for scheduled U.S. carrier flights. In 2019, the rates were 2.3 (IAC) and 0.10 (U.S.), but in 2020, both IAC countries and the U.S. enjoyed a 0.0 rate of fatal crashes. The following year, however, IAC countries reported a 1.9 rate of fatal crashes, whereas the NTSB reported a 0.0 rate.1
Against this background of Russian airline safety, let’s now turn to the impact of sanctions. While some commentators emphasize that no fatal crashes have been tied to sanctions, others claim they make Russian airlines unsafe and that it’s only a matter of time before such a fatal crash happens. Some even argue that life-threatening dangers prove aviation sanctions are effective and could help turn Russians against Putin.
To reassure the public, Russian aviation officials insist the country’s airlines are safe despite sanctions, as do Russian business media and aviation journalists. This plays to Putin’s claims to legitimacy based in part on withstanding anything the West throws at him. In sharp contrast, Ukrainian media tells Russians their airlines are a disaster waiting to happen precisely because of sanctions. Independent Russian journalists banished by Putin concur, raising alarms about efforts to cover up the impact of sanctions and about the many ways Russian airlines cut corners on safety. In short, an information war exists around the morbid question of whether a Russian jetliner will crash and the role sanctions could play.
Fears of a fatal crash were validated by the emergency landing of a Ural Airlines A320 in September, apparently caused by malfunctioning hydraulics tied to sanctions. But a closer examination by a Russian aviation journalist suggests the pilots played a more important role by pressing on to an airport for which there wasn’t enough fuel. Recent Russian state assessments of aviation safety similarly point to pilot error and poor training as the chief causes of aviation incidents. More generally, airplane disasters are usually caused by a convergence of factors—bad weather, a manageable mechanical failure and pilot error—not just one problem. In public discussions, however, pinpointing sanctions’ role tracks more with the politics of the war than technical expertise.
At the end of the day, Russian airlines and aviation authorities are solely responsible for putting planes in the sky and Russians’ lives at risk. They continue to claim that everything is fine. But if a fatal crash of a Boeing or Airbus flown by a Russian airline kills hundreds, I predict this narrative will quickly change. Putin will blame the West as he does for everything else affecting his legitimacy, from Russia’s economic problems and his diplomatic failures to protests against his regime and even the war he started in Ukraine.
Such a scenario will be a serious test for policymakers who argue that punishing Russia with sanctions is still worth it. To prepare for this, they need to take a page from the Biden administration’s release of intelligence on Russia’s military buildup before the full-scale invasion: publicize as much intelligence as possible on sanctions and their impact, as well as Russia’s aviation sector and what it does or doesn’t do to ensure safety. As Putin’s regime falls back on Soviet-era secrecy about airline safety, sharing such intelligence will be a powerful tool. This will also contribute to broader Western efforts at combatting Russia’s better known disinformation campaigns such as those denying its human rights abuses in Ukraine.
Footnotes
- The NTSB measures fatal crash rates per 100,000 departures, whereas the IAC measures this rate per 1 million departures. The results of the NTSB data (e.g., 0.011 in 2018) can be compared to the IAC results for that year (0.8) by recalculating the NTSB data (1 fatal crash for 9,353,813 total departures of scheduled U.S. air carrier flights) per 1 million departures; in other words, by moving the decimal one place to the right. The comparison therefore shows a rate of 0.8 fatal crashes in IAC countries and 0.11 in the U.S. in 2018; 2.3 (IAC) and 0.10 (U.S.) in 2019; 0.0 in both IAC countries and the U.S. in 2020; and 1.9 (IAC) and 0.0 (U.S.) in 2021.
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