Kommersant: Ural Airlines did not agree to the terms of the aircraft buyout

Airlines «Ural Airlines“and iFly have still not re-registered foreign aircraft as Russian property due to disagreement with the conditions. About it writes Kommersant, citing three industry sources.

The new leasing company is NLK-Finance (controlled by the Federal Air Transport Agency and part of the NSC). According to interlocutors, air carriers were not satisfied with the requirement to issue financial leasing, which means the transfer of aircraft into the ownership of the airlines, pay 30–40% of the cost of the aircraft as a deposit and annually transfer a fixed share of net profit (also 30–40%) to offset the redemption.

At the same time, Aeroflot previously received aircraft under operational leasing – after the end of the leasing, the aircraft will be returned to the owner, notes Kommersant. A source close to the Ministry of Transport claims that the Ministry of Finance put forward additional demands. He did not rule out that conditions could change. At the same time, the newspaper’s interlocutor in the Cabinet of Ministers said that the Ministry of Finance did not put forward such demands.

Ural Airlines expects to close deals on at least 19 aircraft, and IFly on three aircraft. Funds for this are allocated from the National Welfare Fund as a soft loan for 15 years. Earlier, Vedomosti’s source in one of the airlines participating in negotiations on the repurchase of ships expressed fears that all the funds of the National Welfare Fund will be used to pay off obligations “Aeroflot“, and private airlines will not be able to use the funds.

In total, the National Welfare Fund allocated 300 billion rubles for the purchase of aircraft. Previously, NSC settled with Western owners for 49 Aeroflot aircraft. The cost of 45 of them amounted to 167 billion rubles, writes Kommersant. The amount allocated for the remaining four airliners is unknown. According to experts, the total amount could be 180 billion rubles.

Airplanes of Ural Airlines are being assessed at 28–33 billion rubles, and iFly at 9–10 billion rubles. S7’s application for 50–70 billion rubles is also being considered.

After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the EU countries, the USA, Great Britain and their allies imposed sanctions against Russian civil aviation. Western companies are prohibited from supplying Russian carriers with new aircraft, components for them and participating in their maintenance. Russian airlines are also prohibited from flying over the territory of the European Union, the United States and other countries that have joined the sanctions.

Against this backdrop, Russian airlines faced the threat of seizure of Airbus and Boeing aircraft leased abroad. Russian carriers en masse re-registered the aircraft remaining at their disposal into the Russian registry, but many of them were never removed from foreign registries.

The Ministry of Transport proposed to buy the aircraft of foreign lessors with the help of the National Welfare Fund. 300 billion rubles were allocated for these purposes. in the form of a loan at a rate of 1.5% for 15 years.