Aeroflot

Is Aeroflot safe?

Aeroflot's record before 2022 was in line with a large network airline, with one bad exception: the 2019 Superjet fire at Moscow Sheremetyevo that killed 41 people. What has changed since 2022 is everything around the aircraft. Western manufacturers no longer support its fleet, the EU has banned it on safety grounds, and ICAO has flagged Russia's handling of leased aircraft as a Significant Safety Concern. We score Aeroflot 50. That is a lower score built on dated regulatory findings, not a prediction about any flight.

The crashes that matter

SU1492, 5 May 2019. A Sukhoi Superjet 100 returning to Sheremetyevo after a lightning strike landed fast and heavy, bounced twice and hit the runway a third time hard enough to rupture the wing and fuel tanks. Fire spread through the rear cabin and 41 of the 78 on board died. The final report from MAK, the Interstate Aviation Committee, blamed the captain's alternating, extreme stick inputs during the bounces. It also found that approved training did not prepare crews for the aircraft's direct control mode, and that Aeroflot's flight-data monitoring had not picked up the captain's habit of pushing the stick forward in the flare.

SU821, 14 September 2008. A Boeing 737-500 flown by the subsidiary Aeroflot-Nord under the Aeroflot code crashed on approach to Perm, killing all 88. MAK found that the captain became disoriented at night in cloud on an attitude display he was not used to, that alcohol was found in his body, and that the airline's management of 737 flying and maintenance was a systemic cause.

The same year a Tu-154 was written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary on take-off at St Petersburg with no deaths. Earlier Soviet-era "Aeroflot" crashes belong to a state monopoly with hundreds of regional directorates, not to today's company.

What changed in 2022

When Western lessors ended their leases after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia moved hundreds of foreign-owned aircraft onto its own register. The European Commission found that Rosaviatsia had let Russian airlines fly them internationally "without a valid Certificate of Airworthiness", and in April 2022 it placed Aeroflot, Rossiya, Pobeda, S7's operating company Siberia Airlines and 17 other Russian airlines on the EU Air Safety ListEU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary. The Commission stressed this was a safety decision, separate from the sanctions that had closed EU airspace to Russian aircraft on 27 February. Aeroflot and Rossiya were still on the list published on 9 June 2026.

ICAO's Secretariat posted a Significant Safety Concern against Russia on 15 June 2022 over this "dual registration", and the ICAO Council ruled on 22 June that Russia was breaching the Chicago Convention. In a paper to the ICAO Assembly in July 2025, Russia called the concern political and said the "red flag" still covered its whole airworthiness area.

Aeroflot has since bought many of these aircraft through insurance settlements with lessors: 30 in 2025 and 113 aircraft plus five engines between 2023 and 2025, according to its annual report.

How sanctions affect maintenance

Airliners are maintained with the manufacturer's parts, manuals, service bulletins and engine shop visits. Since February 2022 US rules have required a licence for aircraft parts going to Russia, reviewed under a policy of denial. On top of that, the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has kept a temporary denial order on Aeroflot since 7 April 2022, last renewed on 11 September 2026, after it kept flying US-origin jets to China, India, Turkey, Thailand and Egypt. The order bars US-origin servicing except safety-of-flight work that BIS authorises. A 2023 BIS order against Iran's Mahan Air cited reports that Aeroflot had started sending aircraft to Mahan for maintenance.

Aeroflot's own 2025 annual report shows how it is adapting. Its engineering arm, Aeroflot Technics, received Rosaviatsia approval in October 2025 to repair CFM56 engines, which power 203 of the group's A320s and 737s. In 2025 it approved 120 modifications and non-standard repairs, including alternative materials and fasteners, without the original design organisations. The Superjets have a different problem: their SaM146 engines are a French-Russian design, and in September 2026 Aeroflot's chief executive said the fleets flying them will shrink unless the state pays to fit Russian PD-8 engines.

These are workarounds that no Western regulator has assessed. We score the fleet 55 rather than the 80s that an 11-year-old fleet of Airbus A320s and Boeing 737-800s would normally earn.

What we cannot see

Before 2022 Aeroflot's incidents appeared regularly in international databases. Since then far fewer have, and Russian investigation reports are harder to reach from outside. Known recent events include a Boeing 777 that diverted to Delhi over cabin fumes in May 2025 and a Superjet engine failure that forced a diversion to Astrakhan in April 2026. Treat a thin record here as missing data, not as a clean one.

Flying Aeroflot: practical points

• Check the operator. Flights sold as SU may be flown by Rossiya (FV), which flies all of the group's Superjets.
• Expect disruption in western Russia. EASA's bulletin for Russian airspace, valid until January 2027, warns that air-defence activity against Ukrainian drones can affect major international airports, and that GNSS jamming and spoofing are common. Build slack into connections in Moscow.
• No flights to the EU, UK or US. EU airspace has been closed to Russian aircraft since February 2022, and Aeroflot's international flights now go to Turkey, the Gulf, Egypt and Asia.

How we scored it

The accident record (60) reflects the 2019 Superjet crash and the 2008 Perm crash under the Aeroflot code. Oversight (25) is low because Aeroflot is EU-listed and ICAO's Significant Safety Concern on Russian airworthiness is still in place. The fleet (55) is young but depends on maintenance and parts that no Western authority has approved since 2022. For comparison, see S7 Airlines and the group's low-cost airline Pobeda.