Holidays while the homeland is waging a war of aggression has led to a dead end for thousands of Russian tourists.

You are stuck because there are hardly any return flights.

In Thailand alone, at least 6,500 holidaymakers are said to be affected, according to the local tourism authority.

Many states have banned Russian airlines from overflights.

They avoid destinations that the state Aeroflot and other companies are likely to head for.

They would have to fear that leasing companies would confiscate their reclaimed but not recovered aircraft there - especially since Moscow apparently plans to nationalize these jets, which would be tantamount to expropriation.

Timo Kotowski

Editor in Business.

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Russia's aviation is already largely decoupled from international traffic.

The next blow for Aeroflot, its low-cost subsidiary Pobeda, S7 Airlines, Utair and others, comes from the Bermuda Islands in the middle of the Atlantic.

Bermuda has grounded hundreds of planes belonging to Russian companies.

The competent authority justified this with the limited possibilities due to the sanctions to exercise the supervision of aircraft operated in Russia in the Bermuda register.

According to the authorities, the fact that the airworthiness certificates are now temporarily suspended means that the aircraft concerned would be traveling internationally without a valid license if they were to take off abroad at all.

This is the new Bermuda crisis of Russian aviation.

More than 700 passenger aircraft affected

The scale of this is large: 745 aircraft of Russian airlines are not registered in the company's home country, but on the archipelago.

According to industry estimates, this includes almost all Western-made aircraft used in Russia, i.e. almost all Airbus and Boeing jets there.

The affected aircraft can be identified by their license plates, the sequence of letters on the rear fuselage.

For German aircraft it starts with D, for Russian ones with RA, for those registered in Bermuda with VP or VQ.

The accumulation of Russian aircraft in the Bermuda register dates back to a time when airlines wanted to save on import duties or taxes when buying or leasing aircraft.

Meanwhile, Russia is keen for aircraft to receive domestic certification.

However, this did not lead to the end of registrations in Bermuda – even with the state-owned Aeroflot.

In the Aeroflot fleet, almost only machines from the Russian manufacturers Sukhoi, Ilyushin and Tupolev have RA identifiers.

According to industry circles, aircraft rental companies are said to have attached importance to the fact that their Airbus and Boeing jets leased to Russia are registered elsewhere, for example in Bermuda, and are therefore subject to Western approval standards.

Putin responds with a counter-decree

Moscow is now taking countermeasures to get out of the situation that most aircraft now lack international certification.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing Russian airlines to obtain new Russian airworthiness certificates.

This was reported by the Tass news agency on Monday.

It remains doubtful whether such a new registration without the consent of the owner is legally possible at all.

More than 500 aircraft in Russia are owned by foreign leasing companies such as Ireland's Aerocap.

With aircraft leasing subject to sanctions, landlords have canceled contracts and reclaimed aircraft with a total market value of around $10 billion - so far to no avail.

fear of expropriation

It would be more drastic for the aircraft owners if Moscow transferred the passenger planes to a state agency that decided on the further use of these jets.

Such plans, which could be decided this month, had become known from Russia.

Lufthansa Technik has also expressed concern that the company's spare parts located in Russia could be expropriated.

Boeing and Airbus have stopped all deliveries of parts there.

The horrific vision of aircraft owners would be that retained leased jets would be used to obtain spare parts in order to maintain Russian domestic traffic in the longer term.

The execution of repairs in this way and their documentation will depend on whether aircraft can ever be used by other airlines without lengthy downtime and maintenance, according to industry circles.

Meanwhile, Russian airlines are also losing executives.

The deputy head of the state Aeroflot, Andrei Panov, has apparently left.

“We left Russia.

I left Aeroflot.

The old life is over," he wrote on Facebook.

Andrei Kalmykov, head of the Aeroflot subsidiary Pobeda, had previously resigned.

Russia is increasingly decoupled from international air traffic.

For tourists in the Dominican Republic, a detour around the EU was found last week.

The Russian holiday airline Azur Air chose a route with a stop in Morocco, which Russia has not yet imposed flight sanctions on.

Even with a new ticket and a change in Turkey, Serbia and the Emirates, there are still ways.

However, Russian vacationers in Thailand can sometimes no longer get money locally because payments through Russian banks are blocked.