Lawsuits flocked to Zhukovsky – Newspaper Kommersant No. 21 (7466) dated 02/06/2023

The Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region will continue to sort out who will pay for the Ural Airlines plane that collapsed in 2019 during an emergency landing in a corn field. The airline’s insurer, AlfaStrakhovanie, is trying to recover almost 3 billion rubles from Zhukovsky Airport, which it previously paid to the European owner of Airbus. The liability of the airport operator was insured by IC Soglasie, but so far, according to Kommersant, the insurance company refuses to pay, and the case can be taken to court. If Zhukovsky is forced to pay himself under the claim of AlfaStrakhovanie, then, according to lawyers, in order to avoid bankruptcy, the amount can be divided between its shareholders, one of which is Rostec.

On February 7, the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region will continue to consider the claim of AlfaStrakhovanie for the recovery of almost 2.9 billion rubles. with JSC “Ramport AK” (operator of Zhukovsky airport) and LII named after M. Gromov, responsible for the airfield. The lawsuit was filed in May 2022. The third party is Ural Airlines. AlfaStrakhovanie requires the airport to recover its own losses caused by the payment of compensation to the Irish owners of the Airbus 321, which made an emergency landing in a cornfield in October 2019.

“We are conducting a lawsuit (with Ramport Aero.— “b”), since the root cause of the incident was a collision of an aircraft with birds as a result of unsatisfactory ornithological support, ”Ilya Kabachnik, deputy general director for aviation insurance at AlfaStrakhovanie, confirmed to Kommersant. He noted that “the ruin of the defendant is out of the question, since the airport has a liability insurance policy.” Mr. Kabachnik refrained from details.

At the same time, according to a Kommersant source in the airport community, a standard airport liability insurance policy often “has small amounts of liability limits.” Most often, the risks involve “apron damage to aircraft”, as well as delays in the dispatch and service of passengers or the supply of in-flight meals and fuel. At the same time, the effect of the policy, according to him, usually covers the area of ​​responsibility of the ATM service and in some cases provides for the reimbursement of the entire cost of the aircraft to the operator.

According to unconfirmed reports, Ramport Aero was insured in IC Soglasie for $ 100 million. But the difficulty of collecting compensation, according to another interlocutor of Kommersant in the market, lies in the clause according to which “many contracts do not recognize incidents that occurred as an insured event due to gross negligence, negligence or intentional actions of the client. “Perhaps the airport insurer is trying to prove that the bird incident falls under such an exception,” he suggests.

As Kommersant was told by an interlocutor close to Rostec (co-owner of Ramport Aero), due to the lack of pre-trial payments from Soglasiya for the 2019 accident, the airport operator is considering going to court. At the moment, as Kommersant found out, Ramport Aero is already suing Soglasie over insurance compensation for another incident with the Ural Airlines aircraft in the amount of 2.5 million rubles. According to Kommersant, we are talking about compensation for damage to the elevator of the Ural Airlines aircraft, which was in the parking lot, during a collision with an Icarus (Pegas Fly) in October 2018. The next meeting in the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region is scheduled for March 6.

Rostec said that “until the proceedings are completed, the comments are premature.” Kommersant did not respond to IC Soglasie, Kommersant sent a request to Ramport Aero.

If Ramport Aero fails to obtain payments from Soglas, it will be extremely difficult for the airport to cover the amount of AlfaStrakhovanie’s claim on its own. According to SPARK, all three structures – Ramport Aero itself, the subsidiary Ramport AK and the ZhIA Cargo cargo terminal – showed losses from 2018 to 2021. The total amount of cash on the accounts of the three companies at the end of 2021 is less than 77 million rubles, and the value of the net assets of Ramport Aero is 520 million rubles, the terminal is 60 million rubles. The press service of Zhukovsky previously told Kommersant that they had made a profit at the end of 2022, without disclosing its size. The profit was achieved thanks to the growth in passenger traffic to 1.39 million people (plus 5% by 2019), the “expansion of partnership” with Red Wings, as well as the active flights of Ural Airlines to the CIS countries.

According to the latest reports of the operator Zhukovsky, until 2022, 52.5% of Ramport belonged to the Dutch United Airports Management BV, 25% to TVK Russia Rostec, 22.5% to Boris Aleshin, adviser to the head of the UAC. In 2022, foreign shareholders withdrew from the capital, how the shares are now distributed has not been officially disclosed.

Each legal entity has a sign of property isolation from its shareholders and must independently answer for its debts, says K’Amelawt partner Anastasia Shamshina. She notes that Zhukovsky Airport is not included in the list of backbone enterprises under bankruptcy immunity. If such a person is unable to answer, the lawyer adds, the defendant is assumed by the one who bears subsidiary liability for him. According to Art. 399 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, if the subsidiaries do not have enough property, the shareholders respond “in proportion to the share of participation and the level of influence on decision-making.”

Aigul Abdullina