In Kamchatka, where there is no railway and a poorly developed road network, the operation of Czech L-410 aircraft was stopped due to a shortage of spare parts. RBC reports this.
In total, the region’s fleet, as the publication notes, included three L-410 aircraft, which were purchased with funds from the federal and regional budgets in 2010–2011.
By September 2023, they have exhausted the service life of some components and assemblies, and it is not possible to replace them through parallel imports, the press service of the Far Eastern airline Aurora clarified.
The L-410 aircraft were the newest in the fleet of the local airline, which continues to operate on the An-26, An-28, Yak-40 produced in the USSR, as well as helicopters of the Mi-8 family.
The Kamchatka authorities assure that they will replace the L-410 with other types of aircraft, and the refusal to use the aircraft will not affect the transport accessibility of the region’s settlements.
Kamchatka became the second Russian region to stop operating the L-410 due to a lack of spare parts. At the beginning of 2023, the Komiaviatrans company from the Komi Republic stopped using such aircraft. The region also has no railway and a poorly developed road network.
According to the Federal Air Transport Agency, there are now seven commercial operators of L-410 aircraft left in the Russian Federation: Siberian Light Aviation, Khabarovsk Airlines, 2nd Arkhangelsk United Aviation Squadron, Polar Airlines, Gazprom Avia, Aeroservice and KrasAvia “. In total, these companies have 28 such aircraft in their fleets. Another four L-410s are used to train cadets at the Ulyanovsk Institute of Civil Aviation.
In Russia over the past seven years there have been three plane crashes involving L-410 aircraft. In September 2021, such a plane crashed in the Irkutsk region, killing four people, including the pilot. In November of the same year, an L-410 plane with paratroopers on board crashed in the Kemerovo region, killing 15 people.
In November 2017, a plane crash involving an L-410 aircraft occurred in the Khabarovsk Territory. As a result, six people died, including two crew members.
