IrAero

Is IrAero safe?

IrAero scores 51. It has had no fatal accident in our 20-year window, and its only written-off aircraft in that time is an An-24 destroyed at Blagoveshchensk in 2011, when everyone on board survived. The weaker part is everything around that record. The EU lists IrAero as unsafe, it has no IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit, the core of its fleet is An-24 and An-26 turboprops, Soviet designs from the 1960s, and its newer Superjets lost engine support in 2022. Two incidents in 2019 and 2020 point to problems with crew discipline.

Where IrAero flies

IrAero began in 1999 flying cargo from Irkutsk to Yakutsk with two leased An-26s and started scheduled passenger flights in 2006. Its bases are Irkutsk, Moscow Domodedovo and Magadan. The network runs from small northern airfields in the Irkutsk region, such as Bodaybo, Kirensk and Mama, to holiday routes to Vietnam, the Philippines and China; in October 2026 it opened a Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Harbin route. The company also flies forest-fire and search-and-rescue work for the state.

The Blagoveshchensk crash

On 8 August 2011 IrAero flight 103, an An-24RV on a multi-stop route from Irkutsk to Khabarovsk, approached Blagoveshchensk in a thunderstorm with torrential rain and strong turbulence. The weather was far worse than the minimums for the captain, the airport and the aircraft. The crew descended well below decision height without seeing the runway, did not go around, and did not react to the ground proximity warning. The aircraft hit trees to the right of the runway threshold and was destroyed. All 41 people survived; four passengers were seriously hurt.

MAK, the Interstate Aviation Committee, called it controlled flight into terrain. It named the crew's decision to fly the approach as the main factor, and also faulted the airport's weather service, which reported conditions much better than they were, and the controller who cleared the approach into a storm. With no fatal accident in 15 years, the accident record sits in our 80–94 band; we score it 82, near the bottom, because of this crew-caused hull lossHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary inside the 20-year window. An earlier An-26 hull loss at Ust-Kuyga in 2002 falls outside it.

Two incidents that point at the crews

• Sakkyryr to Yakutsk, 31 August 2019. On a scheduled An-24 flight, the captain let a female passenger with no authority sit in the co-pilot's seat and gave her flying lessons. The flight landed safely, but a video surfaced in November; Rostransnadzor classed the flight as a serious incident and Rosaviatsia sent the case to the Investigative Committee. Because the act was by IrAero's own captain, it counts in the incidents factor.
• Sabetta to Moscow Domodedovo, 16 January 2020. A Superjet touched down on a new runway that was still under construction, beside the runway it should have used, and could not be moved for hours. No one was hurt.

AeroInside also lists Superjet engine and gear problems in 2018 and 2021 and an An-24 anti-skid failure in 2020. It logs nothing for IrAero after October 2021. Russian news adds three events since then. On 12 March 2025 an An-24 taxiing out at Irkutsk for Olyokminsk ran off the taxiway in a turn; it was not damaged, and transport investigators opened a preliminary check for breaches of air safety rules. On 10 July 2025 an An-26B-100 that had flown 32 passengers from the Baimskaya gravel strip via Keperveem to Magadan was found after landing with holes in the fairings of its cargo ramp rails and dents in several antennas, probably from stones thrown up on the unpaved runway; Rosaviatsia opened an incident investigation. On 18 October 2026 a tyre on the right main gear of an An-24 burst on landing at Irkutsk during a training flight, and the crew reported smoke; no one was hurt, and the runway was closed for two and a half hours. These are technical and runway-surface events rather than crew errors, so they do not change the score much. We still treat the record since 2021 as incomplete, not clean.

An old fleet with three support problems

IrAero's own site lists the Airbus A319, the Sukhoi Superjet 100, the Bombardier CRJ-200, and the An-24 and An-26, and says it is the largest An-24 operator in Russia. The Antonovs are the core of its regional network and carry the oldest designs: production of both types ended decades ago, Antonov is a Ukrainian company, and every airframe now flies on life extensions approved in Russia. The Superjets are much younger, but their SaM146 engines lost their French partner's support in 2022, and the A319s and CRJ-200s lost Western parts at the same time. We score the fleet 30, below Yakutia's 33.

Who should think twice

• Passengers on northern Irkutsk routes. These flights use An-24s on short runways in long, hard winters, with few alternate airports. Expect delays and cancellations when the weather turns, and keep spare days in your plans.
• Anyone connecting through Moscow or Sochi. EASA's bulletin for Russian airspace west of 60° East, valid until January 2027, warns that drone attacks and air-defence activity can close airports at short notice and that satellite navigation is often jammed.

How we scored it

The accident record (82) is IrAero's strongest factor: no deaths in 20 years, one crew-caused hull lossHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary in 2011. Oversight (20) reflects the EU listing, Rosaviatsia's open ICAO concern and the lack of IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary. The fleet (30) carries the An-24s and An-26s and the Superjets' engine problem, and incidents (40) the 2019 cockpit visitor and the 2020 wrong-runway landing. For the other big East Siberian airline, see Yakutia Airlines.