Russian aviation authority says ‘incidents’ in Russia have decreased, while independent and foreign media report the opposite

The Russian Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) has issued an unprompted statement saying that there is no trend suggesting an “increase in aviation incidents” in Russia. Rosaviatsiya said that the first 11 months of 2023 showed a 1.3 percent decrease in passenger and cargo aircraft incidents from the same period of the previous year. Rosaviatsiya emphasized that the number of problems is decreasing even as aircraft flight hours are going up.

Russian independent media and foreign media have repeatedly written about a recent increase in the number of aviation incidents in Russia. On December 11, The Moscow Times reported that there were at least 15 cases of airplanes breaking down in Russia over a two-week period. Newsweek wrote that from September 1 to December 8, there were 60 aviation incidents in Russia related to technical failures. Novaya Gazeta Europe calculated that from January to August 2023, there were more than 120 aviation incidents involving passenger aircraft in Russia, which is 2.2 times higher than the average for the last five years.