State Aviation Oversight Reveals Widespread Violations in Russian Aircraft
The audit found airlines regularly violating airworthiness directives and performing fictitious maintenance.
Vladimir Kovalsky, head of the State Aviation Oversight Authority (Gosavianadzor), spoke about violations in the country«s civil aviation. He made the statement at the National Aviation Infrastructure Salon on 4 February. A video of his speech was published by the Telegram channel «Aviatorshchina».
According to Kovalsky, Gosavianadzor has recorded not isolated cases of violations. These include:
failure to fully comply with airworthiness directive requirements;
allowing faulty aircraft to fly;
allowing aircraft with incomplete maintenance or unresolved defects to fly;
cases of modifications, alterations, and structural repairs performed in violation of FAP-21 (Federal Aviation Regulations) requirements and without involvement of authorized organizations;
violation of work procedures;
ignoring prohibitions on component swapping;
non-compliance with environmental conditions during work;
lack of control procedures when addressing recurring defects;
untimely performance of structural repairs.
«That is, fairly serious violations. Unfortunately, we continue to detect — and this is quite common — fictitious work completion. This looks especially alarming against the backdrop of a certain lowering of the acceptable violation threshold. In principle, any violation is unacceptable,» Kovalsky is quoted by our colleagues at Fontanka.
Interestingly, at the same aviation salon, the head of the Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya), Dmitry Yadrov, stated that in 2025 the number of aviation incidents decreased to 7. For comparison, in 2024 there were 17. It is worth noting that passenger traffic did not change significantly. In 2024, Russian airlines carried 111 million passengers. In 2025 — 109 million. These figures were provided by Rosaviatsiya.
