St. Petersburg, December 10, 2025 - As part of the XV International Forum "The Arctic: Present and Future" named after A.N. Chilingarov, held on December 9-10 at <Expoforum>, a substantive discussion was held on the development of aviation in the Arctic and the Far East regions.
General Director of the Russian House of Aviation, Dmitry Ermilov, presented an analysis of the key problems of the industry and a comprehensive set of proposals for their solution. As Dmitry said, "The situation in the industry is difficult, sometimes difficult, but not catastrophic. But in order to prevent deterioration of this situation, it is necessary to make a number of important decisions immediately."
During the speech, a number of problems and challenges were identified. The main one is the critical age of the fleet: a significant part of the fleet consists of Soviet-era aircrafts (An-24, An-26, An-2, Mi-8) with an average age of over 40 years. Maintenance and airworthiness support is complicated by logistical difficulties, a shortage of spare parts and limited repair facilities, which has been illustrated by various examples.
But, as Dmitry pointed out, "Despite the existing difficulties, we need to maintain our old fleet for 10-15 years while we expect a gradual evolutionary replacement with new aircrafts and helicopters. To do this, it is necessary to apply comprehensive support measures to all who are involved in maintaining the airworthiness of the aircraft fleet, which forms the it's
basis: operators, MRO organizations, manufacturers of spare parts and parts stock consolidators"
To renew the fleet, the emphasis was placed on the needs to expand preferential lease programs (based on the State Transport Leasing Company model (GTLK)) for the new aircrafts.
