Russia's biggest airline asked employees to refrain from reporting malfunctions on flights, report says

• Aeroflot asked its employees to stop reporting malfunctions on planes, Proekt reported.
• This means that many flights are departing with significant equipment issues, the outlet added.
• Flying in Russia has become increasingly dangerous as Western sanctions continue to bite the aviation industry.

Russia's biggest commercial airline Aeroflot has asked its employees to refrain from reporting malfunctions as it continues to suffer under Western sanctions, according to the investigative Russian outlet Proekt.

Senior flight attendants at the company were sent an email in March last year in which they were told they should only log faults after obtaining approval from the pilot in command, Proekt reported on Monday. The investigation cited internal company documents and interviews with current and former employees.

This means that many flights are departing with significant breakdowns that staff are fully aware of, several employees said.

A senior Aeroflot flight attendant told the publication that employees were instructed "not to record any breakdowns encountered during flights in the Cabin Log Book (CLB), but rather to verbally communicate the details of the issues and their location," according to a translation by independent Russian media outlet The Insider.

"Consequently, in cases where spare parts were unavailable and in order to avoid grounding the plane, the aircraft was allowed to take off with a malfunction, even if it was quite significant," the flight attendant added.

A former Aeroflot employee told Proekt that the main reason behind the directive is "to prevent aircraft from being grounded due to a malfunction that, on paper, should prevent the aircraft from being operated until it is fixed."

A series of Western sanctions implemented after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine prohibited its aviation industry from being able to service its aircrafts or get spare parts delivered.

As a result, the Kremlin announced earlier this year that it would legalize "cannibalization," which means Russian engineers can remove serviceable parts from one plane to keep others flying.

The lack of aircraft maintenance has already led to several close calls.

One Aeroflot flight in January had to make an emergency landing due to a faulty toilet system, while another was forced to land one month later due to an air conditioning malfunction, according to a report by the independent Russian news outlet Arbat.

A former pilot told Proekt that on a flight in January, he found a fuel leakage while starting the engines of a Boeing 737. When he called technicians to investigate the leak, they said it had been there for a while.

"It had happened several times before, but there were no records of it in the technical log book — the airline's management asked us not to write anything," the pilot told Proekt.

Denis Brailsford, the head of asset management at the UK's leading aviation consultancy group IBA, previously told Insider that flying in Russia could become increasingly dangerous.

"Access to spare parts, which are sanctioned, is very limited," Brailsford said. "And the ability for Russian Airlines to perform repairs on those parts ... is very limited."

Aeroflot did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.