Owners Outfoxed as Russia Absconds With $10 Billion of Jets
Lessors have retrieved only a couple dozen of 500 aircraft
Repo man’s biggest fear: ‘These aeroplanes are gone forever’
ByJulie Johnsson and Danny Lee
March 8, 2022, 9:42 AM MSTUpdated onMarch 8, 2022, 10:14 AM MS
WTI Crude
123.70USD/bbl.+4.30+3.60%
Open
Aircraft owners are coming to grips with the loss of hundreds of Airbus SE and Boeing Co. jets that Russian carriers have effectively shielded from seizure behind a new incarnation of the Iron Curtain.
With the window just about closed, foreign leasing firms have succeeded in repossessing only about two dozen of the more than 500 aircraft rented to Russian carriers, according to Dean Gerber, general counsel for Valkyrie BTO Aviation. The planes in limbo have a market value of about $10.3 billion, aviation analytics firm Ishka estimates.
Technically, lessors have until March 28 to retrieve the planes under European Union sanctions. But state-owned Aeroflot PJSC and other Russian airlines have already gathered the vast bulk of them back inside the country, out of reach of their owners. The government aided the effort by instructing carriers to stop flying internationally and return the jets to Russia by Tuesday.
“The number one fear right now is that these aeroplanes are gone forever,†said Steve Giordano, managing director of Dover, Delaware-based Nomadic Aviation Group, one of a handful of firms specializing in aircraft repossessions.
Desperate Hunt
The shock from the rapid turn of events rippled through the roughly 2,000 attendees gathered at the annual ISTAT Americas convention in San Diego, where Valkyrie BTO’s Gerber spoke on Monday. There, elation over the fading omicron wave of coronavirus -- the bane of aviation for the past two years -- gave way to talk of spiking oil prices and doomsday scenarios for the stranded jets.
Comment