Russian airlines sent half of the dispatchers to idle time

This was announced by the President of the Federal Trade Union of Air Traffic Controllers (FPAD) Sergey Kovalev in a letter to the Prosecutor General's Office.

According to Vedomosti , the trade union requires the supervisory agency to conduct a detailed audit of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise State Corporation for Air Traffic Management. The reason for the check, according to the FPAD, are complaints about mass layoffs of staff.

To date, about 2,000 people have already left the staff of the national air navigation service provider, of which about 600 are air traffic controllers. The trade union notes that today more than 6% of all air traffic controllers have already been fired in the country, another 20% have been withdrawn on a simple or part-time job in order to save the wage fund.

Earlier, the Prosecutor General's Office had already conducted an inspection of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "State Air Traffic Management Corporation", but did not find any violations as grounds for taking prosecutorial response measures, Kommersant notes.

Problems in the Russian aviation industry began during the coronavirus pandemic, during which a significant part of flights was reduced, the borders between many states were closed. However, the aviators managed to cope with the first wave of the crisis thanks to internal reserves. However, after the start of the military special operation of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine and the introduction of Western sanctions against the Russian Federation, the situation worsened: by May of this year, due to a drop in traffic volumes, the corporation lost about 60% of its income. Now the losses of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise have already reached 2 billion rubles. The trade union notes that the domestic aviation industry during the period of sanctions needs additional state support.

In some airlines, the situation is so critical that they have begun to dismantle aircraft for spare parts .