S7 will reduce winter schedule due to difficulties with Airbus engines

As Kommersant found out, S7 Airlines will reduce its autumn-winter schedule by 10–15% compared to last year due to difficulties with servicing the Airbus A320/A321neo. Today, the company does not fly and is in service about 20% of the fleet, including 13 out of 39 neo. The problem is the repair of American P&W engines, which is not carried out either in the Russian Federation or in Iran. Kommersant’s interlocutors in the government and the Ministry of Transport reported that the company was going to part with these aircraft. The company emphasizes that it has not yet made a request to export them abroad and is looking for options for servicing them. S7 has the largest neo fleet after Aeroflot, but the latter and other Russian operators have them equipped with different engines and continue to fly.

As Kommersant has learned, S7 Airlines will reduce the capacity of its autumn-winter schedule from November to March by 10–15% compared to the same period last year. A market source close to the airline explained that this is due to “planned aircraft maintenance.” As sources in the Ministry of Transport and the industry explained to Kommersant, the carrier took this step primarily because of difficulties with servicing the Airbus A320 A320/A321neo and the Pratt & Whitney (P&W; USA) engines installed on them. The carrier’s fleet includes 103 aircraft, of which today, according to Flightradar24, 21 (20% of the fleet) are not flying.

So, out of 31 A320neos aged from two to six years, as of October 10, six are worth it. Of the eight A321neos (from two to five years old), not one is flying today – two of them were undergoing repairs in February, four in the summer, and two more since October 2. All three 17-year-old Airbus A319s have been stationed at Domodedovo since September 30. Also, three A320s have not been flying for several months and one A321 (out of 16) has not been flying for a week. Five out of 17 Embraers have not been flying for one to ten months. Also, one out of 19 Boeing has not been flying since the end of summer. A source close to the carrier clarified that S7 “really does not currently operate all aircraft in its fleet,” emphasizing that “winter is traditionally the high season for maintenance.” The duration of various forms of maintenance, he added, depends on both the type of work and the availability of hangars.

As two Kommersant interlocutors at the Ministry of Transport clarified, P&W engines are the latest generation and are produced in a much smaller series than the CFM installed on the Airbus neo of other carriers. Repairs of P&W, according to an interlocutor at the Ministry of Transport, were not carried out either in S7 Technics or in Iran, where they deal with “more widespread and understandable equipment.”

According to another source, S7 intended to get rid of the neo aircraft and request permission to export at least 22 aircraft abroad. According to government decree No. 302, this requires a decision from the Ministry of Transport. “Kommersant” did not answer there. A Kommersant source in the government clarified that more than 22 aircraft were involved.

S7 told Kommersant that they had not submitted applications to export aircraft abroad and refrained from answering other questions. A source close to the company confirmed to Kommersant that S7 is now “looking for a solution to repair P&W engines.” “There was a discussion with the Ministry of Transport about the specifics of servicing P&W engines on neo, and a number of meetings were held to discuss how these issues could be resolved,” he added.

In addition to the S7 fleet, there are another 73 A320/A321neo aircraft in the Russian Federation. Of these, Aeroflot has 58, Ural Airlines has 11, and the North Wind and North-West charter companies have two each. The neo largest carriers, Kommersant’s source clarified, use French-American CFM Leap engines. There are fewer problems with these planes. Aeroflot, according to Flightradar24, has one A321neo idle, and a total of 11 other types of aircraft out of 171 in its fleet are not flying (6%). According to a Kommersant interlocutor close to the group, these aircraft are undergoing scheduled maintenance. All Ural Airlines flights are neo; in total, three aircraft out of 52 Airbuses have not been flying for less than a month. The carriers did not comment on the situation with Airbus.

CFM began producing Leap engines in 2013, P&W began producing its neo engine, the PW1000G (GTF), in 2016. This summer, P&W recalled more than 1,000 of these engines due to problems. Then the Financial Times wrote that air carriers in Europe and the United States were forced to cancel flights because of this. As a result, according to the IBA, at least 57 airlines have taken aircraft with such engines out of service.

P&W and CFM engines are new and extremely difficult to maintain, says Kommersant’s source in the industry. He predicts that CFM operators may also face the impossibility of servicing them in the Russian Federation. He does not believe in the possibility of mastering repairs in the Russian Federation, noting that CFM Leap has more opportunities for unofficial service due to the greater serial production and number of services in the world.

It is virtually impossible to support both types of engines, unlike less progressive ones, without official support, as well as to import them under gray schemes, agrees Dmitry Voskresensky, representative of Willis Lease Financial Company in Eastern Europe (the largest lessor of Rolls-Royce, General Electric and CFMI engines) : “These are “chipped” motors whose movement is controlled.” These engines are highly dependent on software, without updating which they cannot be operated, he believes: “Upgrades to young Leap and GTF are more comprehensive and often include error corrections.” He adds that the latest generation (Leap) engines are repaired by only three or four subsidiaries in the world, and GTF is carried out only by P&W itself. GTF retains a large number of so-called childhood diseases. Modified engines undergo large checks on average every three to four years; for new types this period is shorter.

In January 2023, S7 had already suspended the operation of eight of its A321neo, then the carrier explained this by maintenance against the backdrop of a seasonal decline in demand, when aircraft with increased capacity are in demand on fewer flights. As then, the winter reduction will not affect transportation “neither in the country’s volumes nor on the airline’s scale,” notes a Kommersant interlocutor close to the Ministry of Transport. He is also confident that “a solution for the young neo fleet with a good resource in S7 will be found.”

Reducing the fleet in winter to carry out repairs is a traditional process against the backdrop of a seasonal decline in traffic, agrees Infomost Consulting expert Alexey Sinitsky. A 15% reduction in transport capacity cannot have a fundamental impact on business, he says. At the same time, operators of the most technically advanced types of equipment found themselves in a more difficult situation than carriers with more common models. And until solutions are found, saving fleet resources today looks like a much more rational strategy “than chasing operating indicators for the sake of subsidies and passenger traffic statistics.”

Aigul Abdullina