RusLine

Is RusLine safe?

RusLine scores 54. No one has died on a RusLine aircraft in our 20-year window, but two of its landings ended with the aircraft on its nose: a Brasilia turboprop in 2015, which 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, and a CRJ at Tomsk in 2020. It 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, its only type is an older Canadian regional jet with no factory support since 2022, and outside databases show a long run of gear problems on that fleet. The worst crash under its flight number, at Petrozavodsk in 2011, was flown by another airline.

A small airline linking Russian regions

RusLine began as a charter operator in 1997 and has held its own certificate since 2003. Since 2007 it has flown Bombardier CRJ-100 and CRJ-200 jets with 50 seats on routes that link regional cities to Moscow Vnukovo and Zhukovsky, St Petersburg, Kazan and Yekaterinburg. Since 2023 two CRJs have been based at Naryan-Mar in the Arctic, and in 2025 and 2026 it added flights to Sukhum in Abkhazia from Moscow, Perm and Orenburg. It carries fewer than half a million passengers a year, going by the category it entered for Russia's Wings of Russia awards in 2023 and 2024.

The Petrozavodsk crash

On 20 June 2011 a Tu-134A crashed on approach to Petrozavodsk on a late-evening flight from Moscow Domodedovo that RusLine had sold as its own scheduled flight 243. Three days earlier RusLine had cancelled that flight and two others for lack of aircraft, and moved its 43 passengers onto a charter it ordered from RusAir: a Tu-134 with RusAir's crew, flying under RusAir's flight number and call sign, CGI 9605. In fog much worse than forecast, the crew descended below the safe altitude without seeing the approach lights, hit trees and crash-landed on a road short of the runway. Forty-seven of the 52 people on board died.

MAK found that the captain had let the navigator run the approach and shut out the co-pilot, that the navigator was mildly drunk, and that the crew used a satellite navigation unit in a way the Tu-134 manual did not allow. Under our wet-lease rule, the crash counts against RusAir, whose crew, certificate and call sign flew it, not RusLine. It still matters to RusLine passengers. MAK found that RusLine had scheduled more flights than its own aircraft could cover, against Russian certification and licensing rules, and replaced them with charters. That finding is older than our 10-year window, so we describe it but do not score it.

Two nose-gear landings

• Moscow Domodedovo, 31 July 2015. An EMB-120 Brasilia from Ulyanovsk could not lower its nose gear, and the crew landed with it up. No one was hurt, but the aircraft 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 (ASN).
• Tomsk, 3 February 2020. A CRJ-100 from Yekaterinburg with 35 people on board touched down normally, then its nose gear collapsed at about 80 knots and it skidded to a stop on the runway. No one was hurt; AeroInside classes it as an accident with substantial damage.

Neither has a published final report we could find. Both are mechanical failures of the same system. With no fatal accident in 15 years, the accident record sits in our 80–94 band at 82, level with Ural Airlines, whose two hull losses were a bird strike and a fuel emergency.

An ageing CRJ fleet

The CRJ-100 and CRJ-200 are no longer built, so every RusLine jet is many years old. Since 2022, Western manufacturers have stopped parts and support for Russian airlines, which leaves RusLine and its own maintenance company, RusLine Technic, to keep the fleet flying with whatever parts they can find. AeroInside's record shows how much the gear system already troubled the fleet before that: landing gear that would not retract after take-off at Samara, Voronezh, St Petersburg, Tyumen, Kaliningrad and Mineralnye Vody between 2015 and 2021, plus an engine shutdown near Lipetsk in 2016 and a cracked windshield in 2020. Each ended with a safe return. We score the fleet 35 and incidents 48.

AeroInside lists nothing for RusLine after February 2021. As with other Russian airlines, that means the data stopped, not the events. Regional news shows a few since: in 2026 two flights from Naryan-Mar to Ufa turned back, one in February after a warning that a door was not closed and one in October with an electrical fault. Both landed normally.

Before you book

• Arctic routes. Naryan-Mar and other northern airports have long winters with ice and snow; the 2019 Voronezh slide on an icy runway shows how slippery surfaces catch out small jets. Allow for delays.
• Western Russia. 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.
• Check who flies your flight. The 2011 crash shows that a ticket can carry one airline's name while another airline's crew flies it. If the aircraft type on your booking changes, ask which airline operates it.

How we scored it

The accident record (82) is RusLine's strongest factor: no deaths on its own aircraft, two nose-gear accidents. Oversight (20) reflects the EU listing and Rosaviatsia's open ICAO concern; its 2019 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 gets no credit, because no audit since 2022 can be confirmed. The fleet (35) reflects a single old type with no factory support. For a larger regional airline under the same regulator, see Utair.