Taiga Airlines

Is Taiga Airlines safe?

Taiga Airlines has no accident on its certificate that we could find in the last 20 years. That record carries its score of 55. The rest is harder going. Many of its flights are helicopter crossings over cold sea to the Kuril Islands, its Canadian-built Twin Otters have been cut off from their makers since 2022, 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, and Rosaviatsia, its regulator, has been under an ICAO Significant Safety Concern since 2022.

Our confidence is low. Taiga publishes passenger numbers but no fleet count, and helicopter events in Russia rarely reach outside databases.

Who flies your flight

Taiga is the renamed Aviashelf, a Sakhalin company founded in 1998 that mostly flew helicopters to offshore oil and gas platforms. In 2020 the Far East's governments planned a joint regional airline under the brand "Taiga", and Aviashelf's two new Twin Otters were the first aircraft to carry the name. The joint airline became Aurora instead, but the Sakhalin company kept the brand.

Today Taiga flies under its own certificate with the ICAO code TGA. Aurora sells many of its tickets, so passengers often book a Taiga flight on Aurora's website. The network includes Twin Otter routes from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Shakhtersk, Nogliki, Smirnykh and Sovetskaya Gavan on the mainland, Mi-8 flights between Shikotan and Kunashir and from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Severo-Kurilsk, and helicopter routes from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur to Okhotsk coast villages such as Tugur and Chumikan. In the first half of 2024 it carried 22,186 passengers.

Two technical scares in 2025

On 1 May 2025 a Mi-8 flying from Severo-Kurilsk to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky with 16 passengers and 3 crew lost oil pressure and then an engine on the approach. The crew landed normally on the remaining engine, and no one was hurt.

On 8 August 2025 a Twin Otter, RA-67265, left Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk for Sovetskaya Gavan with 14 passengers, four of them children. In the climb the crew smelled fuel and found kerosene on the cabin floor by the door. They returned and landed safely, and the inspection found fuel leaking at the door hinge and along the rear fuselage. The aircraft was grounded, and the Sakhalin transport prosecutor opened a check of how it had been maintained and prepared for the flight. We have not seen a result, so we do not count it as a finding.

Neither event hurt anyone, and both crews did what they should. They do show where the risks sit: ageing engines and maintenance on aircraft that are hard to support.

Sanctions and the Twin Otters

Taiga's Viking DHC-6-400s are the newest version of the Twin Otter, with a modern Honeywell glass cockpit. They are also Canadian, and support stopped in 2022. In February 2023 ASTV reported, from preliminary estimates, that the engines of the two Sakhalin aircraft had life left only until March or April 2024, and that sanctions made it impossible to find a repair shop. RA-67265 was still flying in August 2025, and we could not find out how the engines were handled.

The helicopter side is easier. Mi-8s are Russian-built and Taiga has received new Mi-8MTV-1s from the Kazan plant through the state leasing company, alongside older Mi-8Ts and Mi-8AMTs.

Fog, sea and volcanoes

Taiga's network is one of the hardest in Russia for small aircraft. Weather often closes the Kuril routes. On 3 and 4 May 2026 Taiga cancelled its Mi-8 flights from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Severo-Kurilsk, and transport prosecutors stepped in because stranded passengers were not given the services the federal rules require. Volcanoes add to it: on 26 October 2026 KVERT raised Chikurachki in the northern Kurils to aviation code orange.

Before you fly Taiga

• Wear the survival suit properly. On over-water helicopter flights Taiga hands out sealed, insulated suits. In cold water they decide how long you can wait for rescue.
• Build in spare days. Kuril and Okhotsk coast flights run weekly or less, and fog cancels them often. Know your rights to meals and a hotel if you are stranded.
• Check the operator. If you booked through Aurora, the flight may be Taiga's. For Kamchatka's own regional airline, see Kamchatka Air Enterprise.

How we scored it

The accident record (80) is the strongest factor: no accident found in 20 years, on a small number of flights. Oversight (25) reflects 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 and ICAO's open concern about Russia. The fleet (40) mixes new Mi-8s with Twin Otters short of engine support, the incidents (55) include an engine failure and a fuel leak in 2025, and the sea, fog and volcanoes keep the environment at 35.