Spare parts from the planes of the Mexican company Interjet put up for auction

As it became known to Kommersant, the property of the Mexican airline Interjet, including spare parts for Airbus and SSJ 100, was put up for auction as part of the bankruptcy procedure. The carrier purchased 22 aircraft from Russia, all of which have lost their airworthiness. So far, only spare parts are being sold, since the SSJs themselves remain pledged to a consortium of banks with the participation of VEB. Irkut notes that it is now impossible to return the planes themselves from Mexico either legally or technically: they have not been diagnosed since 2019. Russian airlines are not officially interested in the auction, although they need components, and lawyers consider sanctions risks to be minimal.

In Mexico, on May 31, an auction started, which will sell the property of the largest foreign customer of the SSJ 100 in the past, Interjet, which was declared bankrupt in April. According to the inventory of the Mexican Arbitration Court (Kommersant has it), the total value of the movable property put up for auction, including office equipment, is $105 million, most of which is spare parts for the Airbus A320 and SSJ 100.

Half of the SSJ parts can only be purchased with Airbus parts. But about a hundred items can be bought separately: in particular, interior doors, “SaM146 engine components” and more than 500 Michelin tires and “recovery wheels” (the last lot will cost $2 million). According to one of Kommersant’s sources, the range of components allows us to judge that they were “removed from at least three SSJs.” The 400-page inventory list on Airbus is even more extensive, from wires and seat belts to CFM56 engine parts.

In total, Interjet has received 22 SSJs since 2013 and planned to increase the fleet to 30 aircraft, but refused to supply eight more by 2019. At the same time, it became known about the airline’s desire to abandon all SSJs. Interjet explained this decision by the problems of after-sales service of the aircraft and its engines. But experts in the Russian aviation industry and abroad argued that the carrier’s financial position was also affected by the depreciation of the peso and inefficient management.

The delivery of 22 SSJs, according to Kommersant’s sources, cost more than $500 million – $23 million for each. Interjet purchased them on credit from a consortium of four banks – VEB.RF, Natixis (France), Deutsche Bank (Germany) and Intesa San Paolo (Italy). The planes are pledged until the loan is repaid. According to the latest data, the carrier owed almost $300 million to creditors. The aircraft themselves are not currently for sale. According to Kommersant’s interlocutors, all of them have lost their airworthiness. The airline did not manage to pay for any of the eight “additional” SSJs, but four were delivered to Venice at the former base of the Russian-Italian joint venture SuperJet International (SJI) to prepare for transfer to Mexico.

The banks did not respond to Kommersant, the ex-head of Interjet Carlos Del Valle refrained from commenting.

In Irkut, Kommersant clarified that the aircraft “belonging to SJI can be brought into a state of airworthiness.” But under the sanctions, the return of aircraft from Italy is impossible, they added. The possibility of returning SSJ from Mexico, as specified in Irkut, was theoretically considered until 2022, “but the bankruptcy procedure of the company did not allow anything to be done in practice.” Now it is legally impossible, the corporations added, and given the time that has passed since the cessation of operation, a return is also technically impossible.

Irkut specialists conducted the last assessment of the technical condition of the aircraft in 2019: then some of them could be restored, “but the costs were not commensurate with the possible effect of further sale or operation.” “According to representatives of airlines who conducted negotiations and were in Mexico, including those who received limited access to aircraft, restoring airworthiness is almost impossible,” Irkut says.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade did not respond to Kommersant, and Russian carriers operating SSJ and Airbus declined to comment officially. But Kommersant’s interlocutors in airlines claim that it was almost impossible to obtain detailed information from Mexican colleagues on the condition of aircraft, engines and other components even before the sanctions. Some Kommersant sources doubt that buying even the most scarce spare parts makes sense after many years of inactivity.

According to a closed UEC report, the corporation considers only four of the 44 SaM146 engines installed on Mexican SSJs to be serviceable. But, as a Kommersant source in the aviation industry clarified, “there is no reliable data about them.”

It hardly makes sense to buy engines in Mexico from a consortium of banks, since repairing them in the Russian Federation without the participation of the manufacturer of the hot part – the French Safran – will still not work out, aviation expert Oleg Evdokimov agrees. But the restoration of these aircraft abroad seems to the expert “more than possible.” He notes that in 2016, the GSS (now Irkut) already returned three SSJs from Laos to the Russian Federation after three years of inactivity of Lao Central, as well as three aircraft of the Indonesian Sky Aviation, which stopped in 2014: “Specialists went out and promptly resuscitated the cars, years standing in a humid climate.

“The restoration of Interjet aircraft would help to improve the image of the aircraft, discredited abroad, in order to maintain the export presence of SSJ,” says Mr. Evdokimov. Hope for future deliveries to partner countries is “better than passive observation of their decay,” Oleg Evdokimov believes. Now three SSJs remain abroad – two with the Thai Air Force and one with the border service of Kazakhstan. The “emphasized lack of interest” in Mexican aircraft on the part of carriers and a manufacturer in the Russian Federation, the expert believes, “seems strange, given the minimal risk of sanctions.”

EU Regulation 833/2014 prohibits any transfer of equipment or technology “suitable for use in aviation” to any person from or in Russia. At the same time, Interjet does not formally fall under the requirements of the regulations, since they are not of an extraterritorial nature, says Ekaterina Makeeva, head of the sanctions practice at A-Pro. In addition, the purpose of the sale is to satisfy the requirements of Interjet’s creditors, and not to deliberately circumvent sanctions.

If the planes are encumbered with a pledge, but their creditors do not use the right to keep the property for themselves as part of bankruptcy proceedings, they can be sold, adds Yury Fedyukin, managing partner of Enterprise Legal Solutions. He also believes that Interjet is not afraid of sanctions, as “upon completion of the bankruptcy procedure and bidding, it will be liquidated.”

At the same time, the lawyer doubts that “Russian airlines, even if there is an interest in the property being sold,” will participate directly. If such transactions take place, Mr. Fedyukin explains, most likely, the property will be acquired by a certain company registered in Mexico or offshore, and it will change ownership several more times before it gets to the Russian Federation.

Aigul Abdullina