Emergency squeeze: Massive inspections await 51 airlines due to increased accidents
Large-scale inspections are awaiting 51 Russian regional airlines due to the doubling of aviation accidents in the industry. Among them are Azimut, Aurora, Alrosa, Izhavia and others. They will affect both the activities of the carriers themselves, as well as their aircraft maintenance and specialist training. Izvestia reviewed the draft instructions of the Cabinet of Ministers to Rostransnadzor. According to the aviation authorities, without these measures, there is a risk of a repeat of such disasters as with the An-24 Angara near Tynda. Izvestia investigated whether the checks would help change the situation in the industry.
Which airlines will be checked
The aviation authorities will carry out control measures against 51 regional airlines from December 1, 2025 to December 1, 2026. The inspections were initiated by a draft government instruction addressed to Rostransnadzor (Izvestia has it). They will affect the activities of carriers in key areas: aircraft maintenance, specialist training, flight safety and airworthiness maintenance.
The reason is the risk that regional carriers will repeat the situations that led to the Angara An—24 crash on July 24, according to a letter from Vladimir Fonarev, deputy head of Rostransnadzor, addressed to Vladimir Poteshkin, Deputy Minister of Transport.
He cites crash statistics: the number of accidents in 2024 doubled compared to 2023 (from 8 to 17), and the death toll more than tripled (from 12 to 37). Since the beginning of 2025, four accidents have occurred in commercial aviation, including two accidents and two disasters that killed 53 people, the letter says.
"Negative trends are primarily related to violations of air legislation committed by commercial airlines," says the explanatory note to the draft government instruction on Rostransnadzor conducting preventive visits by regional airlines.
Carriers do not comply with mandatory maintenance requirements, flight personnel are not properly trained, there is no safety management system, deviations from the requirements of operational documentation are recorded, and there is no response to aviation events, the document says.
Based on this, the authorities conclude that the activities of regional air carriers pose a real threat to human lives.
"These circumstances indicate the need for a comprehensive assessment of the activities of operators," concludes Vladimir Fonarev in a letter to the Ministry of Transport.
Meanwhile, Rostransnadzor notes legislative gaps that prevent the active suppression of negative risks in civil aviation, especially among regional operators. Scheduled inspections are allowed only for carriers with a high risk category and no more than once every two years. Unscheduled monitoring is limited by law and is coordinated with the prosecutor's office based on the identified risks, which are difficult to identify without checks.
In this regard, the government's instruction becomes the only basis for a comprehensive assessment of a large number of airlines, the explanatory note says.
This is exactly the order that the Ministry of Transport has drawn up and is coordinating it with the Cabinet of Ministers. It states that the control measures will begin on December 1, 2025 and will last for 12 months. Airlines' compliance with flight and operation requirements, training of specialists and their training programs, as well as maintenance of aircraft, aircraft engines and propellers, with the exception of light aircraft, should be evaluated.
The annex to the draft order contains a list of 51 airlines for evaluation. Among them are Azimut, Alrosa, Aurora, Izhavia, IrAero, Amur, Angara, AeroBratsk, Borus, Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise, Kostroma Aviation Enterprise, KrasAvia, Polar Airlines,RusLine, Severstal Airline, Taiga, etc.
As Rostransnadzor told Izvestia, the practice of conducting unscheduled inspections based on government instructions is not considered exceptional. Such events were regularly carried out from 2022 to 2025.
"At the same time, the service has sent a number of proposals to the Ministry of Transport to decide on the possibility of initiating changes to current legislation," said Vladimir Fonarev, Deputy head of Rostransnadzor.
Aurora told Izvestia that the government's attention to flight safety issues and the instruction to conduct appropriate checks on airlines were understandable. In August of this year, the airline underwent an inspection of the MTU Rostransnadzor in the Far Eastern Federal District: 24 specialists were involved. All the issues raised during the audit have been worked out, the company noted.
— Aurora specialists have developed a safety management standard based on the most modern methods. It is currently being implemented in regional airlines belonging to the group," said Valery Kripa, the carrier's Deputy General Director for Public Relations.
Izvestia sent inquiries to the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Economic Development, the government and regional airlines.
Are inspections able to secure regional air transportation
—After 2022, due to sanctions, the segment of regional and local air transportation suffered after the withdrawal of the fleet of Western equipment, but problems were observed before that," Andrey Patrakov, founder of the RunAvia flight safety service, told Izvestia. — The burden has fallen on the old An-2, An-24 and Mi-8 helicopters of Soviet production — their intensive operation has led to an increase in accidents and casualties.
According to him, the scale of the announced events is impressive. Usually, after plane crashes, spot checks were carried out by the operator who allowed the death of the aircraft and people. However, in his opinion, since 2022 regulators do not have enough inspectors to carry out such large-scale assessments.
— The drivers of the increase in accidents in regional aviation can be called the aging of not only Soviet-built aircraft, but also their pilots. Young people don't come to fly on 50-year—old ships, and old personnel naturally leave the industry," Sergey Detenyshev, president of the Association of Small Airlines (MalAP), told Izvestia. — The human factor plays a high role here.
The situation is also aggravated by the fact that spare parts for long-discontinued Soviet aircraft are not being manufactured now. Repairs are carried out with parts from old warehouses or mothballed ships, which is why technical risks are increasing, the expert notes.
According to Sergey Detenyshev, the checks are insufficient in the current conditions. Airlines are technically unable to comply with the requirements of Federal Aviation Regulations for aircraft maintenance, which ceased production more than 50 years ago. In his opinion, more radical transformations of the civil aviation industry are needed.
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