Pobeda

Is Pobeda safe?

On its record, yes: Pobeda has flown since 2014 without a fatal accident or a written-off aircraft. Its score of 59 is pulled down by everything around the aircraft. Pobeda is 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, it has never had an 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, and its Boeing 737s have been cut off from Boeing parts and support since 2022, with all maintenance done by other companies. We score it below its parent Aeroflot on oversight and above it on accidents.

A short, clean record

Pobeda flies one aircraft type, the Boeing 737-800, in one single-class layout. It had 42 at the end of 2025, according to Aeroflot's annual report. A single type keeps pilot training and spare parts simple, which is one reason low-cost airlines choose it.

The Aviation Safety Network database, which we checked up to October 2026, holds no accident or 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 for Pobeda. The known incidents come from incident databases and press reports:

• Kirov, 12 October 2015. A 737 from Moscow Vnukovo veered to the runway edge on landing and hit edge lights before returning to the centreline. Transport investigators opened an inquiry.
• Istanbul, 2 February 2018. On a go-around, the crew did not make the left turn of the missed-approach procedure and crossed the path of a Pegasus 737 that had just taken off. Turkey's aviation authority measured the separation at 700 feet vertically and about 250 metres horizontally, and opened an investigation into a serious incident.
• Moscow and Gyumri, 2019. Tail scrapes on a landing and a go-around. At Kirov in December 2019, a 737's nose wheel left the paved surface while it turned around at the end of the runway.
• Perm, 8 January 2023. Flight DP6512 veered off runway 21 at about 30 knots during the take-off run and stopped in a snowbank. The 183 people on board left by the slides; Pobeda said no one was hurt.

About 12 years without a crash is good but short. Our rubric reserves 95 and above for airlines with 20 or more clean years at high volume.

Why we know less after 2021

The incident record has a gap. AeroInside, which logged more than 20 Pobeda events between 2015 and 2021, lists none after September 2021, and since 2022 few Russian incidents reach outside databases at all; the Perm excursion is known from press reports. We therefore score incidents (55) on a thin record, not a clean one, as we do for other airlines whose regulators publish little.

Why the oversight score is low

When Western lessors ended their leases in 2022, 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 put Pobeda (AOC 562) and 20 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. ICAO posted a Significant Safety Concern against Russia on 15 June 2022 over the same "dual registration", and in a paper for the 2025 ICAO Assembly Russia was still contesting it. Pobeda remained on the EU list published on 9 June 2026.

Pobeda also lacks something its parent has. Aeroflot's 2025 report lists 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 for Aeroflot and Rossiya, but not for Pobeda, and Pobeda is not on IATA's member list. That leaves Rosaviatsia as the only regular auditor of its operations.

Maintenance without Boeing

Pobeda has no maintenance organisation of its own. Aeroflot's 2025 report says all maintenance is done by outside providers, with Pobeda responsible only for keeping its aircraft airworthy. Those providers now work without Boeing.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a temporary denial order against Pobeda on 24 June 2022. It found that Pobeda had flown US-origin 737s into Russia from Antalya, Gazipasa and Istanbul in March 2022 without the required licence, and later from Minsk, Istanbul and Dubai. BIS renewed the order three times, the last in December 2023 for one year. No further renewal appears in the Federal Register, and the Denied Persons List shows the order ending on 10 December 2024.

By then a wider sanction applied. The US Treasury added Pobeda to its Specially Designated Nationals list in May 2024, with a licence for aviation-safety and wind-down transactions that expired on 30 July 2024. In June 2024 BIS also issued a denial order against SkyTechnic, a Moscow aircraft parts supplier, and Hong Kong companies that BIS said bought US aircraft parts on Pobeda's behalf. BIS cited Russian import data showing that Pobeda received about 1,422 shipments worth $1.5 million between January and May 2023 at SkyTechnic's address, mostly parts made by US manufacturers.

For a 737-800 that means parts and engine overhauls come from Russian repair shops or from sources Boeing does not approve. Aeroflot's engineering arm received Russian approval in October 2025 to overhaul CFM56 engines, the type the 737-800 uses. This is why we score a fleet that would normally earn about 75 at 52.

Flying Pobeda: what to know

• Expect disruption in western Russia. EASA's bulletin for Russian airspace advises its own airlines not to fly west of 60° East, which includes Moscow, because air-defence activity against Ukrainian drones can affect major international airports and GNSS jamming is common. Build slack into connections in Moscow.
• Winter flying. Both landing and take-off excursions happened on Russian regional runways in autumn and winter. Delays for snow clearing and de-icing are a normal part of flying Pobeda from November to March.

How we scored it

The accident record (86) is clean but short. Oversight (20) is below Aeroflot and S7 (25 each) because Pobeda is EU-listed and, unlike Aeroflot, has no IOSA registrationIOSAThe 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 (52) is a single modern type, but it has no factory support and all of its maintenance is outsourced. For a European low-cost comparison, see Ryanair, which flies the same 737-800.