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In little over a week, Russia lost its second fighter jet, Su-30, to an uncanny crash when it was carrying out a massive aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities and battling in the Kherson region. On October 23, an apartment building in Irkutsk, Siberia, was struck by a Russian Sukhoi Su-30SM Flanker multi-role fighter, killing both crew members and starting a massive fire on the ground. Su-30 is a two-seat, twin-engine, highly agile fighter aircraft produced by Sukhoi Aviation Corporation of Russia. The Su-30s are manufactured at the neighboring Irkutsk Aviation Plant, where the jet is reported to have just taken...

When Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday, the news revived a long-simmering debate about the propriety of his revelations of U.S. government secrets. At the same time, it prompted reiterations of a widely-embraced falsehood: that Snowden “fled to Russia.” That disinformation-trafficking wasn’t limited to random people on social media. Among others, The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC, Christian Science Monitor and Canada’s CBC all asserted in the past week that Snowden “fled to Russia” in 2013 after revealing that the United States government had created a mass surveillance regime targeting its own...

When Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday, the news revived a long-simmering debate about the propriety of his revelations of U.S. government secrets. At the same time, it prompted reiterations of a widely-embraced falsehood: that Snowden “fled to Russia.”The disinformation-trafficking wasn’t limited to random people on social media. Among others, The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC, Christian Science Monitor and Canada’s CBC all asserted in the past week that Snowden “fled to Russia” in 2013 after revealing that the United States government had created a mass surveillance regime targeting its own citizens,...

Russian airlines, including state-controlled Aeroflot (AFLT.MM), are stripping jetliners to secure spare parts they can no longer buy abroad because of Western sanctions, four industry sources told Reuters. The steps are in line with advice Russia's government provided in June for airlines to use some aircraft for parts to ensure the remainder of foreign-built planes can continue flying at least through 2025.

Aeroflot on Saturday announced a temporary suspension of all international flights, beginning on March 8 at midnight Moscow time. According to Aeroflot, the suspension is "due to new additional circumstances impeding the operation of flights." "International services scheduled by Rossiya Airlines and Aurora Airlines (flights within the range of SU5400-5799 and SU5950-6999) will also be suspended," the Russian airline added. "To reduce risks for passengers of inability to use return flights to Russia Aeroflot, starting from 6 March (00:00 MSK), will stop admitting on international flights passengers holding return tickets with the return segment to Russia dated after 8 March...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow has begun investigating the safety of a Russian-made medical ventilator, some of which have been sent to the United States, after six people died in hospital fires reported to involve two such machines.

The only way to fix the faulty engine is to lift it out of the hull and replace it with a new one, a work that will cause another year of delay for Russia’s new prestigious nuclear-powered icebreaker. It was during sea trials in the Baltic Sea in February a short circuit caused serious damage to the winding in one of the three electro engines onboard the “Arktika” icebreaker. Sea trials continued with only two of the engines working. Newspaper Kommersant can now tell, with reference to the investigative commission’s work, that it is considered impossible to repair the broken...

Of all the lies that Edward Snowden has told since his massive theft of secrets from the National Security Agency and his journey to Russia via Hong Kong in 2013, none is more provocative than the claim that he never intended to engage in espionage, and was only a “whistleblower” seeking to expose the overreach of NSA’s information gathering. With the clock ticking on Mr. Snowden’s chance of a pardon, now is a good time to review what we have learned about his real mission.

Horrifying new footage of the jet disaster that killed 41 in Moscow has emerged amid claims pilots made basic errors during the emergency because they were incapable of landing without the assistance of autopilot. The Aeroflot plane can be seen bouncing down the runway before bursting into a deadly fireball at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on May 5. The footage emerged as an expert claimed that the experienced captain Denis Evdokimov - hospitalised as a result of the crash - had never previously manually flown the Sukhoi Superjet 100 in so-called 'direct mode' before the crash. A lightning strike soon after...

An Aeroflot passenger jet burst into flames during an emergency landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport yesterday, resulting in a conflagration that left 41 of 78 people aboard the plane dead. While the plane was not a Boeing and did not involve a control system like the one implicated in the recent crashes of Lionair Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the overall circumstances eerily echo the conditions that led to the loss of the two 737 Max jets. In all three cases, pilots suffered a dangerous and unexpected emergency during takeoff, lost the automation that they were used to...

At least 13 people were killed in a fire on a Russian airliner forced to make a hard emergency landing at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport on Sunday, officials said. Russia's Investigative Committee said two children were among the dead but did not immediately provide further details. Airport officials said Aeroflot flight SU1492, a Sukhoi SSJ-100 regional jet, had taken off for the northern city of Murmansk before it was forced to turn around with 73 passengers and five crew members on board.

The Russian government is getting into the business of commercial planes. The Russian United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), which is majority owned by the government, has just unveiled the MC-21 300, which it boasts will be a rival to the best planes coming out of commercial aerospace, like the Airbus A320neo and the Boeing 737Max.

Somehow I wasn’t familiar with the story of Aeroflot flight 6502 from Yekaterinburg to Kuibyshev to Grozny. On October 20, 1986 the pilot of the Tupolev Tu-134A bet his co-pilot that he could land the plane blind. He would draw the curtains on the cockpit windows and make an instrument-only approach. One of the many bizarre things about this incident is, why would the co-pilot accept a bet in which if he wins he likely dies? There’s only the narrowest window in which he might win the bet and actually collect. On approach to Grozny the pilot ignored the ground...

Putin enemy found dead in London eight days after Skripal poisoning, as counter-terror police launch investigation ounter-terrorism police have opened an investigation into the “unexplained” death on British soil of an arch enemy of Vladimir Putin, just eight days after the nerve gas assassination attempt on a Russian double agent. Nikolai Glushkov, 68, the right-hand man of the deceased oligarch Boris Berezovsky, Mr Putin’s one-time fiercest rival, was found dead at his London home on Monday. A Russian media source said Glushkov, the former boss of the state airline Aeroflot, who said he feared he was on a Kremlin hit-list,...

A Russian airline told five Asian-American passengers stranded in Moscow that they would be deported to India despite the fact that they were U.S. citizens, according to a racial discrimination complaint filed by the group's lawyers. The passengers were travelling from Delhi to JFK International Airport on January 7 but their connecting flight was cancelled during a stopover in the Russian capital due to adverse weather conditions in New York—where heavy snow had grounded planes. An Aeroflot employee at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport told the passengers, who are all of south Asian descent, that they would have to voluntarily board a...

Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian exile who was a close friend of a noted critic of President Vladimir Putin, has died from an "unexplained" cause in London, police say. The Metropolitan Police says that its counterterrorism unit is handling the case "because of associations that the man is believed to have had." Glushkov, 68, was a close friend of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a prominent critic of the Kremlin who was found dead in 2013. At the time, an inquiry found he had hanged himself — but Glushkov publicly disputed the idea that his friend and former business ally would have...

A Moscow court has dismissed a lawsuit by Russian flight attendants who had sued Russia’s national airline, Aeroflot, for discrimination. The airline had imposed regulations governing stewardess’ weight, height and clothing sizes. Several Aeroflot flight attendants had stepped forward claiming that the company demoted them based on their body types and attractiveness.

Ukraine has claimed that pro-Moscow separatists downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 after mistaking it for a Russian Aeroflot plane that they supposedly wanted to shoot down to provide Moscow with a pretext for invading Ukraine. [....] Ukrainian Security Service head Valentyn Nalyvaichenko said Thursday that separatists had intended to hit an Aeroflot airliner that was headed from Moscow to Larnaca, Cyprus, and whose flight path passed close to that of the Malaysian jet. Separatists were "ordered" to position a Buk anti-aircraft missile near the village of Pervomaisk in eastern Ukraine, but because the fighters were Russian, not local, they confused...

Aeroflot will pay up to $7.47 billion, including maintenance and insurances, to lease 50 Boeing jets for up to 18 years, Vedomosti reported on Friday, citing two sources close to the state-controlled airline and the leasing company Avia Capital Service. Experts said that the 737 Next Generation aircraft would be used to update Aeroflot's fleet and potentially become the foundation for the company's planned low-cost airline. The lease deal needs to be approved at Aeroflot's shareholder meeting on Oct. 15. Airplanes in the Boeing 737 family cost from $76 million to $109.9 million each to purchase, according to Boeing's catalogue,...

MOSCOW—Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev says he wants Soviet-built airliners similar to the one that crashed this week to be retired starting next year. The 31-year-old RusAir Tu-134 from Moscow crashed in heavy fog late Monday just moments before landing at the Petrozavodsk airport in Russia's northwest, killing 45. Seven people survived. The twin-engined Tu-134, along with its larger sibling the Tu-154, has been the workhorse of Soviet and Russian civil aviation since the 1960s with more than 800 planes built.