Russia Stealing Leased Planes
Russia has 515 "hot planes" and no one can touch them as long as they fly internally.
This week Vladimir Putin signed a new law allowing foreign owned jets to be registered in Russia. The problem is we are talking about 515 jets owned to leasing companies who may or may not see these planes ever again. There is a chance they will be covered by insurances, but that is not guaranteed.
Captain Putin telling the passengers they can fly anywhere as long as it is in Russia.
The flying sanctions hit on the 28th March so these companies have less than 10 days to try and repossess them. The problem is if these airlines aren't in default or in arrears as no crime has been committed until when the next payment is due and by then it will be too late. The leasing companies cancelled their leasing agreements and have been asking for the return of these aircraft with no response.
The 515 planes have no where to fly externally outside of Russian borders due to sanctions so this fleet now becomes an internal Russian destination fleet only. This makes repossessing any aircraft much harder as one need to fly to Russia to bring the planes back. Repo companies would normally wait for the plane to land somewhere outside of Russian territory in order to steal back what is rightfully theirs.
Luckily the 515 planes are not brand new and only worth about $10 billion. If they were spanking new they would be worth in the region of $100-150 billion. The safety licenses have all been suspended and withdrawn as no record can now be kept on the airworthiness of each aircraft. Funny enough AEROFLOT received a brand new Airbus A350 ($350 million) on the day of the invasion being the 24th February so they definitely didn't see this coming. Airbus may have suspected complications, but as long as they get paid they don't care who pays the bill whether it is insurance or a Government kick back.
Russia is the 11th biggest market for leasing planes and with this break in contract will surely make things far more complicated if and when Russia comes back into the fold. What will be the value of the fleet by then and how many planes will be flying. Spares will have to be stripped off the current fleet to keep all the planes flying as Boeing and Airbus will comply with the ongoing sanctions.
Spares may be fairly easy to come by though as if anyone knows how the black market works for illegal clandestine parts the Russians will know. They still have enough "friends" out there who would happily make extra dollars for aero plane spares.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I don't see how this doesn't hurt Russia in the future. Who is ever going to want to lease planes to Russia again?
Exactly as they will just have to pay cash with no lease agreements. Aeroflot is done as a company now.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
They will build their own aircraft and lease Chinese ones.
Russia is completely rejecting all Western companies and going its own way with support China, India and many other countries.
Was reading up on the Chinese air industry and they are not that far behind. Quality maybe a bit suspect but they have the technology as many of Boeings planes fly with Chinese spares.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Oh dear Russia. The future isn’t looking very nice for Russia. How will these companies rebuild relationships when all the scuffle is over?
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
What relationships as they are done now as who would lease them a plane ever again and they will have to buy them outright. Aeroflot is done as a company after this.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
It is quite doubtful as to how long any of these planes can be safely operated even in Russia owing to the maintenance concerns. Modern airliners are extremely complex both in terms of hardware and software and some black market parts are likely to prove a safety hazard particularly when it comes to a deeply corrupt country like Russia. I wouldn't be surprised if the aircraft were prevented from being flown by their own systems in case maintenance updates are not done online regularly.
This one of Putin's stunts proves how hopelessly out of touch he is. Does he really think Russia can afford to piss off the West for the next 100 years?
Yes he does and he may well be right. Russia is not alone. It is supported by China, India, Saudi, most of South America, much of Africa.
The West risks strangling itself with self destructive sanctions.
At the end of the day Russia exports resources which China, India, South America and "The West" compete for. Western sanctions push up prices for themselves and make prices cheaper for everyone else.
Everything The West makes can be sourced in China.
Western IP can just be ripped off.
China is heading toward a demographic catastrophe. Oil and gas should be ditched soon anyway. China's trade with Russia is insignificant compared to that with the West.
The Chinese are going to fuck Russia all ways and sundry. There is no love lost between the two. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was not supported only by four nations: Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria.
Humanity uses resources in an incredibly wasteful manner.
Umm, no. But sure, there is no reason to cut the totalitarians in China or anywhere else any slack.
China, Europe, the US, Japan, Korea, indeed the entire First World (other than Israel) and much of the Second World too are heading towards demographic disaster.
Interestingly Putin is the only world leader to substantially increase the birthrate after it had fallen to catastrophic lows.
It is rumored that Putin has illegitimate children with at least two women but I doubt he is that prolific.
Have you ever been to Russia? Rural parts of the country in particular? It's full of villages that have been abandoned or that are only occupied by a few old people. Russian birthrates have long been at the same low level or even lower than those in Europe.
This is the total fertility rate of Russia. Those bumps in the late 1980's and in the early 2010's are echoes of the boomer generation. The overall trend is firmly to the downside. The Russian TFR has been declining for several years now.
Perhaps we should be happy about it because declining birthrates mean that big land wars like the one in Ukraine right now are less likely in the future.
The Russian military is already disproportionately made up of ethnic minorities. The North Caucasus and the Volga region are exceptions to the low birthrate among the core ethnic Russian population. There could be a tipping point coming after which those populations will increasingly demand more autonomy and ultimately independence. Chechenia is part of the Russian Federation only in name. Putin is pouring billions every year into Chechenia to keep it officially part of the federation. It is in practice a fiefdom held in the federation through a personal relationship between Kadyrov and Putin. The Chechenian model and even independence is increasingly likely when it comes to national minorities in the North Caucasus.
Kadyrov is in Ukraine now. If the Ukrainian military can locate him, he may get killed soon. One of his top lieutenants was killed about a week ago.
Retired colonel general Ivashov, a hardliner warned Putin not to invade the whole of Ukraine before this "special military operation". One his arguments was that the demographic situation does not allow the waste of young men's lives. He's right. Taking a bite the size of Ukraine only hastens the downfall of Russia.
As I said, Putin increased the birthrate from 1.1 to 1.5.
This is quite an achievement.
Its noticeable that prior to the year 2000 (when Putin came to power) Ukraine and Russia followed a very similar path but afterwards Russia gets a substantial boost.
Put Poland, Germany and Italy and other EU countries on this graph and you'll see they are worse than Russia.
Most of their births are not natives but of immigrants. They have a bigger problem with this issue than Russia.
It does not matter how Putin keeps Chechnya in the Russian Federation. It only matters that they fight for him.
In the Kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.
The price of oil probably has a lot to do with that. The total fertility rate is going down again, which is in line with the multi-decade trend.
Guess which of the two countries have exported oil and gas to a substantial degree. The gas fields discovered in the 2010s to the south of Crimea are most likely a huge part of the reason why Putin invaded Ukraine in the first place.
Nato or even the Western European component of Nato has a population many times larger than Russia let alone GDP, which is even bigger in comparison. They are also much more advanced technologically and the level of corruption is nowhere near the abysmal depth that has been endemic to Russia since time immemorial.
I brought up birth rate because it determines whether or not large land wars are feasible in the first place. Russia has won all of its major wars by mindlessly wasting manpower in a war of attrition. We live in an era when this is no longer feasible and that is a fantastic thing because Russia is the only country in Europe interested in waging large scale land wars.
They're not fighting for him even now. The Chechen troops in Ukraine are there for one purpose only and that is to police a.k.a. torture and terrorize the civilians into submission. When the Russian federation stops paying Kadyrov Checnya will be out. It's a strange kind of fiefdom: the fief gets paid a tribute to stay in line and not vice versa. I guessing the rest of North Caucasus is going to follow suit once the demographics are bad enough for ethnic Russians.
Putin is no wise king. He is a tired old dictator who lives in an an information bubble typical of dictators late in their careers and harbors unrealistic dreams of making Russia into a large 19th century style land empire again. Retired Colonel General Ivashov, a hardliner and a chairman of the officers union of Russia, wrote an open letter to Putin asking give up from making war on Ukraine and to step down. Ivashov is a realist who understands Russia's limitations.
Actually these planes can fly to most of the world, just not to the US, EU and a few other US allies ("The West"). China, India, the Middle East, South America, Africa ("The Rest") are all open to Russia.
The world is splitting in two and The West is actually in a very precarious position.
It is dependent on "The Rest" for energy, resources and manufactured goods.
The West earns a large percentage of its income from Intellectual Property. But if governments in "The Rest" stop recognising Western IP, then that is a huge problem.
Russia is starting the ball rolling on this - a very dangerous development.
Yes I see that and would have to fly over friendly countries using their airspace so that means the long way round in many cases. I was talking about this today and wonder if Putin will use some them for cargo transporting in much needed goods.
I agree this is a dangerous development that could actually happen.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Thanks.
What a relief to not be called a Putin lover for just bringing some reality to the situation.
Lol. It is what it is and seeing what is happening. There are many Putin lovers around only because they despise the West that much. This has shown where everyone stands and there is loads of hatred flowing.
Not the biggest problem right now.
I'm all for addressing it, but there are bigger fish to fry first. Handle this one when Russia finishes losing the war.