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Russia is planning to impose a levy on airline tickets from 2027 to fund its struggling civilian aircraft programme, with domestic passengers paying 500 roubles (€5.4) and international passengers 1,000 roubles (€10.8) per ticket, according to the State Duma’s budget and tax committee.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade is developing the measure on President Vladimir Putin’s instructions. The funds would cover the costs of leasing and operating 258 aircraft under the Comprehensive Programme for Expanding the Production of Aircraft, including the MS-21, Tu-214, SJ-100, and Il-114-300 models.
Russia’s civilian aircraft industry has produced no new serial aircraft since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, repeatedly missing production deadlines.
Between 2022 and 2025, Russian airlines received 13 new aircraft against a planned 120, many assembled from pre-sanctions components.
The production timeline has been revised repeatedly. In summer 2026, the large-scale production target was pushed back from 2030 to 2035.
Certification and the start of serial production of the MS-21 and SJ-100 are currently scheduled for 2027, while deliveries of the Il-114-300, which has passed certification, are promised from December 2026.
The Russian airline fleet has shrunk during Moscow’s war in Ukraine as ageing foreign-built aircraft are retired without replacement. Spare parts are scarce and increasingly expensive to source, and Russia has turned to Vietnam to obtain aircraft for lease.
Western sanctions after the February 2022 full-scale invasion cut off Russia from purchasing or leasing Western aircraft and from obtaining spare parts or maintenance services.
However, Moscow passed a law allowing airlines to re-register more than 400 foreign-leased Western aircraft domestically rather than return them to their owners.
Under international aviation law, dual registration of a single aircraft is prohibited, meaning Russia’s re-registrations are illegal, but the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has no enforcement mechanism to compel their return.
Lessors have filed insurance claims totalling around $8 billion (€7.1bn) to recover their losses, with many cases still ongoing.
Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, roughly 850 of Russia’s 900 commercial aircraft were US and European-made Boeing or Airbus planes, of which around 85% were leased from foreign companies.
With Western spare parts and technical services now sanctioned, airlines have been cannibalising the seized fleet for components.
The main production capacity of Russia’s aerospace sector has since shifted toward military aircraft. Official output figures are classified, but industry observers estimate production in the dozens per year.