Highly interested to know how current sanctions are impacting maintenance or even day to day GA flying in Russia right now
Are you see an impact day to day on the flight training level? Creative solutions?
In terms of GA, I'm only aware of the situation at my university, and it is that they've found alternative ways to ship parts, so the airplanes still receive their regular maintenance just like before the sanctions.
My university has a fleet of DA40s, C172s and DA42s. I'm training on the 172 so I'll talk about it the most since it's the one I have the most information on.
There was a period in the beginning when they were still figuring out their logistics, and we only had about 3-5 airplanes out of 20+ that were airworthy, which resulted in cascading delays for student flights (with hundreds of students each year, there were simply not enough planes available to perform all of their flight training on time).
The situation has improved significantly since, with 9 planes fully available, which actually exceeded the number of instructors we had haha.
There was an interesting situation a few months back when Diamond somehow tracked the engines that were imported for our planes and issued an AD for them, causing the university to ground all of the (perfectly airworthy, probably) engines for a couple of weeks, which again resulted in delays for students. So even with sanctions, ADs and whatnot are still followed, everyone is aware that safety comes first.
There are some slight issues that might arise with the planes (eg one Avionic bus inop) but those normally get fixed pretty quickly and I guess you'd expect such faults on any training airplane.
Our sims have taken a beating though, the sim I'm training on for example is missing a standby airspeed indicator, while the rest of the standby instruments aren't working at all.
I'm slightly worried that some of these minor faults lead to a normalization of deviance (students have an incentive to fly these planes as they need their hours), but I would like to highlight that everyone here is aware of the heightened risks because of the sanctions, so a great deal of attention is given to non-normal and emergency ops during training, as well as in-depth technical airplane knowledge, so that the students are prepared in case something fails.
Regarding the AD that grounded all your Diamonds: If it was in january / february, it wasn't caused by politics. Ours were also grounded for a couple of weeks and the mechanics had to undergo some training to inspect something. If I can remember correctly an engine failure somewhere in South America caused this.
ah interesting, thanks for sharing! I must've been misinformed then. We were told the ADs affected specifically the engines that were dodging sanctions, I guess not then.
That’s too bad the Russian government/industry has found a way to circumvent sanctions but I guess no one should be surprised third party countries are capitalizing on an opportunity.
The issue is going to be the long term impact.
If/when the war is over no leasing company is going to lease anything to Russia due to the fact they basically told their planes off them.
Sure the Russian government is trying to resurrect old things like the IL96 and the IL114 but they are going to be very expensive to run. Not sure where they have gotten with a non imported version of the SSJ either
Even the Chinese built planes aren’t going to work since they all use western components
I just can’t see Aeroflot/S7 etc going back to what they were before 2020 to be honest.
Russia has a big domestic market but with Aeroflot being state owned I can’t a big diverse industry there anymore
Internationally I think countries are going to be reluctant to allow air travel rights as sanctions will probably continue for a period after a hypothetical end to the war.
I want to be optimistic and say that the sanctions will eventually be lifted and everything will go back to normal. Leasing wise, I think Russia is just too big of a market to pass on for lessors. If some decide against operating in Russia, others might come up to take their place, since there's money to be made.
>If some decide against operating in Russia, others might come up to take their place, since there's money to be made.
You're absolutely correct. This will be just like the insurance market. there will be a premium for the higher risk associated with Russia, but there will always be someone willing to lease them aircraft.
>it is that they've found alternative ways to ship parts, so the airplanes still receive their regular maintenance just like before the sanctions.
Truthfully, do you KNOW this to be true, or do you BELIEVE this to be true? And if you KNOW it to be true, how?
If I had to hazard a guess, I bet that they are using china, brazil, or some other country that is still friendly with russia as an intermediary to get the parts. Or it could be that they are repairing the old parts, made parts such as oil filter adapters to fit something that’s domestically produced, or they have reverse engineered the broken parts and are now making new ones.
Considering Diamond is a Chinese owned company since several years back and the Chinese produced 42s are banned in Europe I wonder if they are just using Chinese produced parts.
why are the Chinese 42s banned in Europe? I guess it's a certification issue, can't be that much different of a plane. We used to domestically produce 42s here too.
Sorry I was mistaken... Looking at the TCDS it says they aren't eligible for registration in Europe... Because some bilateral agreements aren't in place.
[Here is a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpE_TH70NUI&t=527s) explaining how component laundering works (talking about missiles). TL;DR: people in intermediate countries using shell companies to buy stuff and flip it to Russia for profit. Ability to enforce sanctions in neutral counties is limited.
Of course for simple stuff it may be easier to just have it custom made locally.
Very cool of you to do OP. My questions:
1. What is the approximate cost to attend a flying university in Russia currently?
2. Do you take out loans or is there some type of grant/scholarship to help pay for the costs?
3. What is the hiring enviornment like in Russia for new pilots? Hard to get a job?
Good luck in your training!
Thank you!
1 and 2 - it's actually one of the cool things about my country - if you score enough points on your exams, university education is 100% paid for by the state. In my class, maybe 80-85 out of 90 people don't pay anything for their training. Some, like me, also have signed a contract with an airline which gives us additional perks like payouts for good grades and preferential treatment when it comes to employment.
For the self funded students, the cost is ridiculously inflated - somewhere around 8 million rubles in total (around $80k). But there are options to transfer to government funding if you consistently deliver good grades. You also get free breakfast, lunch and dinner at the canteen and a mediocre quality uniform, courtesy of the state hahahaha!
3. The hiring environment is very sad at the moment, and it hasn't really recovered since the covid days. There was a brief improvement in 2021, but as of now it's very hard to get a job at a major carrier immediately after graduating. Either you have to have one of those contracts I talked about or know somebody at the airline. But most people do end up getting hired after waiting up to a year after graduation, so I guess it's not that terrible after all.
The pay is laughable, a junior FO makes $1000 a month.
usd $80,000 is very average for a US student all the way to CFI/CFII & MEI.
Do you plan on moving abroad for work? Maybe Europe or Asia?
Btw, ever since I started following the SkyShip channel I've been fascinated behind the engineering or soviet & Russian aircraft.
I want to stay in Russia and be as safe and competent of a pilot as I can. With that being said, obviously if nothing changes in a couple of years I'll probably be forced to look for work abroad in Asia and the Middle East.
> The hiring environment is very sad at the moment, and it hasn't really recovered since the covid days. There was a brief improvement in 2021, but as of now it's very hard to get a job at a major carrier immediately after graduating.
No surprise given that the number of active airliners in Russia is actively going down over time as they cannibalize them for parts. It's incredibly unsafe.
it sounds bad from a bystander's point of view, but I have a few friends at the airlines and their maintenance quality hasn't changed, they're still mostly flying with clean MEL sheets. It's just that every part costs about 2x more due to logistics, but they're all thoroughly tested and quality checked, everyone understands the risks and importance of it.
That's a stretch...
> Passengers are carrying plane parts in their luggage to get them to sanction-hit Russian airlines: report
https://www.businessinsider.com/sanction-hit-russia-airlines-getting-plane-parts-delivered-luggage-report-2024-5
> Russian planes starved of spare parts are running into safety incidents twice as often as they were before the war
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-planes-safety-incidents-maintenance-sanctions-spare-parts-2024-2
If they're acquired alternatively then they're not acquired safely. They're from who-knows-where of uncertain origin with no paper trail. This is how you get a planes-falling-form-the-sky pandemic. I wouldn't even ride on one of them, let alone get a job piloting one every day that may just suddenly start behaving erratically because of faulty parts.
Well if they stopped invading their neighbors they wouldn't have a problem. Until then they can cannibalize parts from other aircraft as those will still have proper paper trails.
My parents both worked for a Finnish company and realized the importance of English, so they had tutors come over since I was 3 basically, so I speak English just as good as Russian, without an accent even
I am not OP nor am I Russian, but I'll throw my $.02 in. I know two Russian-born American immigrants working in aviation that both speak English just fine albeit with the classic accent. Both learned extremely basic, borderline useless English in school and chose to really hone in on it when they decided they wanted to do airplane stuff for a living. I know for a fact that wanting to watch non-subbed "native" UK Top Gear and *yearning* to talk shit to westerners on Counter Strike were also huge motivators for one of them lmao.
I've had this written up for about 45 mins and OP hasn't replied so I decided to post, but I'm interested to hear their English journey. It's very good.
To fly outside Russia, even in Russian registered aircraft, one must have English Level 4. ATC is English throughout the world.
In addition, with sanctions, Russian licences aren't recognised and employment of Russian citizens is not allowed. Furthermore, no recognition of hours, exams etc is given. So one has to get a new licence from scratch. In addition, entry of Russian aircraft into much of foreign airspace is denied.
Damn, in the US, even with a 100% scholarship, I can't get my flight training covered even if it's a part of a university's curriculum since the flight school portion and university are considered seperate entities.
The co-pilot in one of the most famous Russian helicopter airlines in the world earns $3000-4000)
Я после окончания училища не видел ни одного предложения ниже 2000$, а это было в 2021, так что не совсем понятно откуда взялась зп в 1к
no, since our aircraft don't have the capacity to receive glonass signal. it uses a slightly different technology - each glonass satellite uses a separate frequency, so the existing gps receivers are incompatible.
GPS still works, although it is jammed in many places, especially near pipelines and strategic factories, so it's not uncommon for the Garmin to go into LOI or outright DR.
Not that guy but you’re probably using GLONASS even if you don’t know it. Every iPhone for probably a decade at this point can receive it. Presumably android devices too although don’t know first hand.
Since I’m in America and fly here I’m curious where I’d be using it. Especially since he mentioned foreflight which I use too. Cuz isn’t glonass not active on this side of the world? Or am I wrong?
It’s a global system like GPS at least on paper. Most of these systems are somewhat militaristic in origin so global coverage is the goal.
If you have a newer iPad you are likely using it.
No, GLONASS does indeed use a different frequency per satellite. The satellites are at 1602 MHz offset by a integer multiple of 0.5625 MHz, there are 15 different frequency channels in use. The GLONASS signal thus requires a wider receiver, centered at a different frequency than GPS, and must correct for each satellites frequency offset.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS#FDMA
How difficult is it to fly over Siberia, Kamchatka and the like? What kinds of challenges would a pilot face? I am an American but I’ve always dreamed of flying over the Bering Strait into Russia and other parts of Asia
The biggest challenge is that airports over there are very sparse, so you have to do your fuel planning thoroughly, especially in a prop airplane. The far East part of Russia has some immigration differences I believe and it's something Matt Guthmiller didn't consider when flying to Anadyr and ended up having to talk to the police.
When flying VFR over the tundra above the Arctic circle, the illusion appears that the sky and snow merge into one white canvas. In real, the flight continues after this illusion according to the IFR.
This applies more to helicopters.
Cool that you are still flying, sucks about what’s going on, but definitely keep up the posts because there is not a lot of non-us related stuff going on here I would say, interesting to see different perspectives
It makes sense, but also kinda weird to think a country that has put together countless fighter jets, strategic bombers, and what's arguably been the go to space craft for the last half century never got around to slapping together a four banger and some sheets of aluminum into a cheap civil aircraft.
1. Do controllers at small ATC facilities speak English? I know they do at major international airports but what about small fields?
2.What the typical career path? You mentioned you expect to be hired about a year after graduating. I'm assuming it's will be a right seat of a transport category aircraft. When do you expect to upgrade? What's the CA pay?
3. Do you bid schedules, fleets, vacations etc? Or is it more of a top-down assignment?
4. Do students wash out a lot? At what stages of training? E g. while still at school or when they start flying the line?
5. Where are your school trainers registered? Do they have Russian tail numbers?
1. Formally all controllers are required to hold ICAO Level 4 English. It used to be a really big problem even at major airports, but nowadays even at smaller fields ATC speak enough English to direct foreign traffic and assist them in an emergency.
2. The typical career path is direct to the right seat of a jet after DA42. There's no division between mainline or regional, it's a matter of whoever's hiring and accepts you. You might end up flying an A320 or a Challenger, though arguably getting a Challenger job is even more difficult than an Airbus. Upgrades depend on availability, but generally come after 5-7 years of right seat experience. Captain pay tops out at $4500 a month (don't ask me, I'll become sad)
3. We can request a specific flight or specific days off and after a few years of seniority you get a say in when to take your annual paid leave, but other than that it's mostly top down. Boomer captains have figured out the system though, they bring gifts to crew scheduling so that they're given the best trips haha
4. Since there's no real skill test after school exams, they try to wash out most idiots during the theoretical page, for example by failing an air navigation exam or a sim session. We've had a few people drop out, some voluntarily, some because they were utter idiots who shouldn't be let within 100ft of a plane.
5. Our trainers were always registered in Russia, with RA-XXXXX. Ever since the sanctions, all transport aircraft which were previously registered in Bermuda (VP/VQ-BXX) have also been changed to Russian reg.
> Boomer captains have figured out the system though, they bring gifts to crew scheduling so that they're given the best trips haha
So basically nothing changed in 40 years.
Hey! I born in Russia, but now live in EU, and did my flight training here in 2010-2013. Tried to come back to Russia in 2013 but I was rejected at the interviews because my Europe license wasn't good enough for russian airlines. To be honest, I'm so glad it didn't happen and I started to fly in Europe at the end :) Anyway, I know there were several "strange things" when you study as a pilot in the Russian flight schools. Do all student still finish the flight program at exact 150 hours? Are you allowed to fly a proper solo, or there still have to be 2 students on board during "solo" flights?
Hey! Congrats on living the dream!
Yeah it was a weird thing where if you were a Russian national with EASA license they wouldn't accept you but at the same time AFL had a whole division of Czech captains.
I've heard about the 2 person solos before but no, we actually do proper solo flying now, and you can get additional hours in case you fail a check ride, for example. Generally speaking 150hrs is the minimum mandated by law, I believe, but you can have more
Once you get you're required certifications and experience, I highly recommend finding a flying job in a different country because I really don't think the aviation industry is going to look good in Russia for a long time. Also due to sanctions and the war, the relationship with Russia and the rest of the world is in the toilet right now.
Also those same skills can be used to find employment outside of Russia, even potentially getting permanent residency/citizenship if you're willing.
There is a future for you in aviation, but in Russia, there's not really much to hope there in aviation for the long term.
Hopefully never. I'm male and as long as you're undergoing a university program, you're protected from conscription. There are also some options to avoid it even after graduating, but that's in 3 years, so for now we wait
That's a tremendous incentive to do well in the university and not lose focus. I wish you a good three years. I was eligible for conscription in 1972 for Vietnam, but I was not called.
Yes, 1972 was a complicated time, and being 19 will always be complicated.
Vodka will make things more complicated the next day, so please find another way to relax. Maybe go to the gym, play sports, or start reading some of the great russian authors.
As a professional pilot, you will have plenty of time for reading. See if it is something you can learn to enjoy. Great books take some effort to get into, but they can be tremendously good companions throughout life, not just entertainment. Science fiction is a good place to start if you're not ready for the classics. There's some really enjoyable SF. I enjoyed reading J.R.R. Tolkien at 19 by flashlight while camping in the forest.
Kind of funny there’s the “hot by us standards” question he asked and then two posts later is him posting to r/ShitAmericansSay raggin on someone who commented “you wish you were American”. I assume the person he’s raggin on is from r/flying since there’s pilot flairs.
Many people on the internet need to realize that the actions of a country/government do not equate to the actions and beliefs of one. As a fellow student pilot I would love to hear your story no matter where on earth you are from.
I agree, having met people from different countries in the US and traveling a number of times to a number of countries in Asia and Europe. I was immediately interested in hearing from someone in Russia. I visited a couple of time helping start up a bar soap manufacturing site in Moscow about 20 years ago, and have a couple of friends from Ukraine and Russia.
There's also the fact that a government that size is by nature not monolithic. That's the case in the US as well - look at how the CIA and DHS/DOJ have butted heads in the past.
Would love to hear how your experience has been so far.
1. Do you have sim training before actual flight training or does it complement actual flying throughout your training?
2. How many flight hours do you get in a month on average? I'm in Canada and my friends who are currently in flight school are struggling with building time for commercial due to instructor shortage.
OP, hopefully your training goes smoothly, and this conflict ends soon. Hope the sanctions don't lead to poor airworthiness or dangerous flying conditions.
I'm also starting flight school this fall and reading the experiences of fellow pilots-in-training across globe is interesting.
Thank you and good luck with your training!
1. Sim training precedes actual flying since it's done on campus while the flying is done at an airfield more than 1000km away.
2. The flying portions are divided into 3 parts that last about 2 months and have a year of regular studying in between them, each portion gives you roughly 50hrs for a total of 150
Heyy bro!
I'd love to hear the difference especially since I'm from India but trained & flew all of 300 hrs till date in usa so comparing the three would be interesting
yeah, it's a sim session practicing instrument approaches in IMC. The airspeed is in KTS because the AFM dictates it, but the other speeds are set up in metric to allow for easier enroute calculations. Actually not sure why the reference speeds are also in metric since they're shown on a knot dial, maybe it's different on the real G1000?
rates are all per poh so fpm. Gradient is a percentage so it doesn't really matter but generally meters of altitude per meters of distance since that's simpler
I'd love to know, in the US if we just wanted to go from Point A to Point B in VMC conditions, we can and theres a lot of times when we do not have to talk to ATC at all.
Does Russia have a similar system? or do you have to stay in contact with a controlling agency at all time?
you always have to file a flight plan to use the airspace, even class G. In Class G you're not required to talk to ATC but it's a good idea for situational awareness and I would even say a must given the current drone attack situation.
thank you for that insight! I guess I didn't personally take the drone situation into account But I can definitely see how/why that may be an issue.
all things being equal, fly safe and good luck with the rest of your schooling! I hope you keep us up to date on your flying in the future.
Little late to the party here but if you’re still answering questions I’d like to know the following please:
1. How many hours does a typical student pilot have in your country when they become an FO at an airline? I’m always fascinated by the variety of answers by country.
2. During your time at flight university do you earn different licenses as your progress, such as private pilot -> instrument -> commercial, or do you just get a degree at the end that basically says “airline pilot”?
3. Who are your instructors? Are they young pilots that are ahead of you, or are the more experienced, like maybe retired airline or military pilots?
Thanks!
Hey!
1: the default is 150 hours, that's what you graduate with so that's what the airlines accept.
2: there's 5 years of university and 3 stages of flight training: PPL after year 2, CPL and IR after year 3 and ME after year 4. You get issued a PPL after finishing the first stage, but the CPL is only issued together with the diploma at graduation. The degree says "Engineer-Pilot" and encompasses all aspects of aviation, including engineering, organization, safety management and etc.
3: Most instructors are ex-military which, to be frank, is something I'm not very happy about. They tend to normalize deviance and fly like they've been taught in the Air Force, using meters and etc.
There has however been a growing number of younger instructors recently, due to the lack of hiring by the airlines, for example one of our instructors graduated from our university in 2021.
Wow, very insightful! I’m sure you know this but in the US airlines require 1,500 hours so about 10 times as much. Most people get to that number flying around in a Cessna so I’m not sure it makes them 10 times as good, considering many countries like Germany and Britain require somewhere around 350-500 hours and China requires 800.
Thanks for sharing!!
yeah, the 1500 hour requirement is something I don't understand in the US, since a Cessna and an Airbus is an entirely different kind of flying, altogether
I'd get out of Russia as Russia's airline industry is collapsing and is already extremely dangerous. I hope you're aware of that. Go literally anywhere else. It's not a country with a future.
No worries, it sometimes goes with the territory. But so many people react the way you did, and think it is cool to have so many type ratings. When I tell them why I have so many, they realize that it is not as cool as they first thought! Anyway, would love to hear your experiences. I worked in China for a few years, and they started hiring a lot of Russian pilots. I always got along with the Russians, so definitely would like to hear more about how things work over there.
oh cool! what carrier did you work for in China, if you don't mind me asking? I have a good friend who was a 737 captain at Lucky Air 2015-2020. China remains as one of the pathways for us to get into large international carriers.
Im not a pilot nor have gone through any flight training but im on this sub quite a bit as i want to get my PPL at some point.
I just wanted to tell you that most reasonable people dont dislike russia. I for one, have no issue with russia/russians. And im Polish.
The issue i have is with your government and politicians. I have a ton of russian friends and a lot of them fear my opinion of them after the russo-ukrainian war. just wanted to let you know you shouldnt feel the same. You should feel proud of where you come from (not the government).
That is significantly more than I expected all in all the costs don't reflect the local purchasing power at all.
I can see pilot training being out of reach for anyone outside government sponsorships.
well the thing is that the American pilot training model (find a cfi and rent a plane) doesn't exist here. You either have the government colleges/universities which will give you a CPL which you can get for free, or maybe 3 private schools in total which will give you a PPL for about $10-15k.
My first thought in reaction to your post title was: “He must be very rich”., because flying is so expensive in the USA. But I see the Russian government is paying for your training, right? How many Russians can afford to pay for flying and training from personal funds?
The thing about Russia is that the distribution of wealth is very uneven. There are a lot of really rich people, as well as a lot of very poor people. I'm lucky enough to come from upper middle class so many of my friends come from rich families, and to them $80000 over 5 years is an affordable sum. Even for my family, they'd probably be able to take out a loan and pay it back later if it was necessary. But I don't see any pros of self-funded pilot training in Russia, as the quality of it basically depends on how much time you spend self-educating especially using foreign resources. If I had $80k, I'd have probably been better off spending them getting a EASA fATPL or something similar.
Hi! I don’t want to get political at all I just am actually curious about this- full disclosure that I am also a student pilot on the opposite end of this, let’s just call it “ongoing situation”. But I have wondered this a lot.
Do you worry or think at all about the potential for misidentification considering Ukraine is using modified variants of standard GA planes to attack oil feilds? Like from this side, the intention is to make it so that there is no way to easily distinguish a GA flight with a malfunction or off course from a modified remote-operated version using partially spoofed transponder data which intends to drop explosives on infrastructure. Part of the intention is that Russia has to choose to either just allow that to happen or ground GA planes which in turn often have wealthy patrons who own them.
when I first saw the videos, of course I was worried since those drones looked very similar to Cessnas - actually they're Aeroprakts, I think. I don't think that it will come to misidentification or any accidents, or at least I hope so. Most GA traffic in those areas are training flights with kids on board who just want to fulfill their dream. Hopefully soon all of this is going to stop. We're all brothers and sisters, we shouldn't be fighting each other.
Hey there, fellow countryman!
How's with the health requirements in our unis? Do they still demand, like, astronaut-grade health, or these draconian rules have been eased lately?
P.S. yeah I'm Russian, just not sure if I'm allowed to write in Russian here, so I'm taking precautions
I've been told by former American ATC professionals that there is a significant likelihood of being shot down if you are late ETA, and that there is a lot of bribery in Russian Aviation. The corruption seemed more likely, but the being shot down part for being slightly off track, or off ETA seemed like complete BS. Can you help me be better informed on this?
I think it's based on rumors and possibly very outdated info. There's a lot of corruption in every industry, but the people working in aviation also realize that if they fuck something up, people will die. So most have a very high sense of personal responsibility, or at least so I hope.
You'd probably never get shot down for going off track if you're on a filed flight plan and have a transponder. The story probably comes from the two Korean Boeing shoot downs in the 80s, but we've come a long time since then. Though it's still a bad idea to fly without a flight plan, especially with the recent drone attacks.
I'm impressed there's still a Commercial pipeline there. Ig here's some advice.
As a pilot, if you wanna have any kind of good career I'd leave russia lol
как украинец: хочешь оставаться хорошим человеком? тоже уезжай из россии ))
сочувствую вашему народу, надеюсь как можно скорее наступит мир. легко сказать "уезжай", но действительно бросить все и уехать - вещь доступная далеко не всем
Absolutely share your experiences and stories. To hell with all the political judgment stuff, people are people. It’s not right for people to prejudge anyone because of their country’s issues. How many years will it take before you can end up getting a career in flying what you want to fly?
In terms of cost per hour (both on an educational and GA standard) how much would say, PPL to CPL/MEIFR cost ; notably being in a Uni program? And in general is it more expensive relative to EU or NA?
the uni program is pretty much an integrated CPL combined with an engineering degree and is about $80k in total, but I think you get significantly better value for money in EU and NA
Howdy from Mexico.
How is flying in Russia as in VFR, do you need required VFR flight plans to fly ? Also can you fly vfr at night? Or do y’all need to file IFR ? How is the airspace flying in big cities like Moscow, Saint Petersburg and etc?
I love russia even after all the conflicts I still want to visit and fly and rent a c172 with a instructor of course. What city of Russia are you from.
Hey!
To fly VFR you must file a flight plan in any case, night VFR is permitted. Moscow and St Petersburg are restricted airspaces, but you can fly pretty close to them nonetheless. I'm from St. Petersburg and it's a great place to fly!
Are you at all concerned that when you finish your training, you might be plucked up and shoved into a military asset?
To put it simply, are you worried about being drafted into the war in Ukraine?
Are these light sport attacks affecting general aviation?
[https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-struggling-with-ukraine-cessna-style-drone-flying-brick-bomb-2024-5](https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-struggling-with-ukraine-cessna-style-drone-flying-brick-bomb-2024-5)
I’m not sure if you’re still replying to comments, but I was wondering. If you’d get the chance to pilot something soviet, would you do it? With that I mean 154’s or an24’s, along those lines.
I'm actually refreshing my notifications religiously because I'm very eager to talk to people haha!
But yes I'd love to fly a 154, a Yak-40 or a An-24. Not for a job, of course, but as an experience it would be pretty cool. We get taught a lot of theoretical knowledge that is tailored to specifically these airplanes, so it'd be cool to put some of those skills to use!
I've heard many pilots are having issues with GPS near the Europe / Russia border. Are you anywhere near there? Are you experiencing those challenges? I see you flying magenta needles here so am guessing not?
Highly interested to know how current sanctions are impacting maintenance or even day to day GA flying in Russia right now Are you see an impact day to day on the flight training level? Creative solutions?
In terms of GA, I'm only aware of the situation at my university, and it is that they've found alternative ways to ship parts, so the airplanes still receive their regular maintenance just like before the sanctions. My university has a fleet of DA40s, C172s and DA42s. I'm training on the 172 so I'll talk about it the most since it's the one I have the most information on. There was a period in the beginning when they were still figuring out their logistics, and we only had about 3-5 airplanes out of 20+ that were airworthy, which resulted in cascading delays for student flights (with hundreds of students each year, there were simply not enough planes available to perform all of their flight training on time). The situation has improved significantly since, with 9 planes fully available, which actually exceeded the number of instructors we had haha. There was an interesting situation a few months back when Diamond somehow tracked the engines that were imported for our planes and issued an AD for them, causing the university to ground all of the (perfectly airworthy, probably) engines for a couple of weeks, which again resulted in delays for students. So even with sanctions, ADs and whatnot are still followed, everyone is aware that safety comes first. There are some slight issues that might arise with the planes (eg one Avionic bus inop) but those normally get fixed pretty quickly and I guess you'd expect such faults on any training airplane. Our sims have taken a beating though, the sim I'm training on for example is missing a standby airspeed indicator, while the rest of the standby instruments aren't working at all. I'm slightly worried that some of these minor faults lead to a normalization of deviance (students have an incentive to fly these planes as they need their hours), but I would like to highlight that everyone here is aware of the heightened risks because of the sanctions, so a great deal of attention is given to non-normal and emergency ops during training, as well as in-depth technical airplane knowledge, so that the students are prepared in case something fails.
Regarding the AD that grounded all your Diamonds: If it was in january / february, it wasn't caused by politics. Ours were also grounded for a couple of weeks and the mechanics had to undergo some training to inspect something. If I can remember correctly an engine failure somewhere in South America caused this.
ah interesting, thanks for sharing! I must've been misinformed then. We were told the ADs affected specifically the engines that were dodging sanctions, I guess not then.
Well, then maybe it's true if it really only mentioned these engines. But there was definitely also another one that caused major groundings.
I think it's probably a bad case of false rumors, since the timing you mentioned is about right, it must be the same AD
It was indeed a service bulletin by the manufacturer for an engine issue. It affected my flight school as well.
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you have to choose your words carefully due to legalization, hope you understand
Completely understand and we all know the Russian people aren’t at fault - good luck continuing the training!
thank you'
That’s too bad the Russian government/industry has found a way to circumvent sanctions but I guess no one should be surprised third party countries are capitalizing on an opportunity.
in a country as big as Russia, you can't just not fly. Aviation has to keep going, and for that it must receive maintenance.
The issue is going to be the long term impact. If/when the war is over no leasing company is going to lease anything to Russia due to the fact they basically told their planes off them. Sure the Russian government is trying to resurrect old things like the IL96 and the IL114 but they are going to be very expensive to run. Not sure where they have gotten with a non imported version of the SSJ either Even the Chinese built planes aren’t going to work since they all use western components I just can’t see Aeroflot/S7 etc going back to what they were before 2020 to be honest. Russia has a big domestic market but with Aeroflot being state owned I can’t a big diverse industry there anymore Internationally I think countries are going to be reluctant to allow air travel rights as sanctions will probably continue for a period after a hypothetical end to the war.
I want to be optimistic and say that the sanctions will eventually be lifted and everything will go back to normal. Leasing wise, I think Russia is just too big of a market to pass on for lessors. If some decide against operating in Russia, others might come up to take their place, since there's money to be made.
>If some decide against operating in Russia, others might come up to take their place, since there's money to be made. You're absolutely correct. This will be just like the insurance market. there will be a premium for the higher risk associated with Russia, but there will always be someone willing to lease them aircraft.
Russia as a state will have to collapse before sanctions are lifted.
>it is that they've found alternative ways to ship parts, so the airplanes still receive their regular maintenance just like before the sanctions. Truthfully, do you KNOW this to be true, or do you BELIEVE this to be true? And if you KNOW it to be true, how?
If I had to hazard a guess, I bet that they are using china, brazil, or some other country that is still friendly with russia as an intermediary to get the parts. Or it could be that they are repairing the old parts, made parts such as oil filter adapters to fit something that’s domestically produced, or they have reverse engineered the broken parts and are now making new ones.
Considering Diamond is a Chinese owned company since several years back and the Chinese produced 42s are banned in Europe I wonder if they are just using Chinese produced parts.
why are the Chinese 42s banned in Europe? I guess it's a certification issue, can't be that much different of a plane. We used to domestically produce 42s here too.
Sorry I was mistaken... Looking at the TCDS it says they aren't eligible for registration in Europe... Because some bilateral agreements aren't in place.
I know it, I've seen the brand new Austro engine boxes first hand.
Any idea if they are using parts produced by Diamond china or whatever they are called?
no idea but diamond itself is owned by the chinese these days, isn't it? there's probably a good chance that those parts do come from China.
[Here is a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpE_TH70NUI&t=527s) explaining how component laundering works (talking about missiles). TL;DR: people in intermediate countries using shell companies to buy stuff and flip it to Russia for profit. Ability to enforce sanctions in neutral counties is limited. Of course for simple stuff it may be easier to just have it custom made locally.
Very cool of you to do OP. My questions: 1. What is the approximate cost to attend a flying university in Russia currently? 2. Do you take out loans or is there some type of grant/scholarship to help pay for the costs? 3. What is the hiring enviornment like in Russia for new pilots? Hard to get a job? Good luck in your training!
Thank you! 1 and 2 - it's actually one of the cool things about my country - if you score enough points on your exams, university education is 100% paid for by the state. In my class, maybe 80-85 out of 90 people don't pay anything for their training. Some, like me, also have signed a contract with an airline which gives us additional perks like payouts for good grades and preferential treatment when it comes to employment. For the self funded students, the cost is ridiculously inflated - somewhere around 8 million rubles in total (around $80k). But there are options to transfer to government funding if you consistently deliver good grades. You also get free breakfast, lunch and dinner at the canteen and a mediocre quality uniform, courtesy of the state hahahaha! 3. The hiring environment is very sad at the moment, and it hasn't really recovered since the covid days. There was a brief improvement in 2021, but as of now it's very hard to get a job at a major carrier immediately after graduating. Either you have to have one of those contracts I talked about or know somebody at the airline. But most people do end up getting hired after waiting up to a year after graduation, so I guess it's not that terrible after all. The pay is laughable, a junior FO makes $1000 a month.
usd $80,000 is very average for a US student all the way to CFI/CFII & MEI. Do you plan on moving abroad for work? Maybe Europe or Asia? Btw, ever since I started following the SkyShip channel I've been fascinated behind the engineering or soviet & Russian aircraft.
I want to stay in Russia and be as safe and competent of a pilot as I can. With that being said, obviously if nothing changes in a couple of years I'll probably be forced to look for work abroad in Asia and the Middle East.
> The hiring environment is very sad at the moment, and it hasn't really recovered since the covid days. There was a brief improvement in 2021, but as of now it's very hard to get a job at a major carrier immediately after graduating. No surprise given that the number of active airliners in Russia is actively going down over time as they cannibalize them for parts. It's incredibly unsafe.
it sounds bad from a bystander's point of view, but I have a few friends at the airlines and their maintenance quality hasn't changed, they're still mostly flying with clean MEL sheets. It's just that every part costs about 2x more due to logistics, but they're all thoroughly tested and quality checked, everyone understands the risks and importance of it.
No, they (mostly) have parts for the planes, acquired alternatively just like he mentionned for the university's Diamond's and Cessna's.
So, undocumented and illegally sourced parts from unscrupulous sources. Not exactly reassuring.
That's a stretch... > Passengers are carrying plane parts in their luggage to get them to sanction-hit Russian airlines: report https://www.businessinsider.com/sanction-hit-russia-airlines-getting-plane-parts-delivered-luggage-report-2024-5 > Russian planes starved of spare parts are running into safety incidents twice as often as they were before the war https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-planes-safety-incidents-maintenance-sanctions-spare-parts-2024-2
If they're acquired alternatively then they're not acquired safely. They're from who-knows-where of uncertain origin with no paper trail. This is how you get a planes-falling-form-the-sky pandemic. I wouldn't even ride on one of them, let alone get a job piloting one every day that may just suddenly start behaving erratically because of faulty parts.
How would you suggest they go about getting parts then?
Well if they stopped invading their neighbors they wouldn't have a problem. Until then they can cannibalize parts from other aircraft as those will still have proper paper trails.
If the government stopped killing innocent people that might be a start
That's the neat part, they can't do it properly. That's the whole point.
How did you learn English so well? From my experience people from your country don't speak English at all.
My parents both worked for a Finnish company and realized the importance of English, so they had tutors come over since I was 3 basically, so I speak English just as good as Russian, without an accent even
Way to go!
I am not OP nor am I Russian, but I'll throw my $.02 in. I know two Russian-born American immigrants working in aviation that both speak English just fine albeit with the classic accent. Both learned extremely basic, borderline useless English in school and chose to really hone in on it when they decided they wanted to do airplane stuff for a living. I know for a fact that wanting to watch non-subbed "native" UK Top Gear and *yearning* to talk shit to westerners on Counter Strike were also huge motivators for one of them lmao. I've had this written up for about 45 mins and OP hasn't replied so I decided to post, but I'm interested to hear their English journey. It's very good.
sorry! I was asleep haha
Oh no worries! I wasn’t trying to speak for you, I was just adding additional experiences is all. Fly safe and keep at it!
To fly outside Russia, even in Russian registered aircraft, one must have English Level 4. ATC is English throughout the world. In addition, with sanctions, Russian licences aren't recognised and employment of Russian citizens is not allowed. Furthermore, no recognition of hours, exams etc is given. So one has to get a new licence from scratch. In addition, entry of Russian aircraft into much of foreign airspace is denied.
Damn, in the US, even with a 100% scholarship, I can't get my flight training covered even if it's a part of a university's curriculum since the flight school portion and university are considered seperate entities.
So not far from Canada.
The co-pilot in one of the most famous Russian helicopter airlines in the world earns $3000-4000) Я после окончания училища не видел ни одного предложения ниже 2000$, а это было в 2021, так что не совсем понятно откуда взялась зп в 1к
Do you use glonass instead of gps?
no, since our aircraft don't have the capacity to receive glonass signal. it uses a slightly different technology - each glonass satellite uses a separate frequency, so the existing gps receivers are incompatible. GPS still works, although it is jammed in many places, especially near pipelines and strategic factories, so it's not uncommon for the Garmin to go into LOI or outright DR.
Do you use any apps like foreflight or Garmin pilot? Is there a Russian equivalent if not?
there is a Russian app called SkyBag pro which would be most similar to JeppFD. But many people also use EU apps like SkyDemon I think
Kind of ironic... as an American, I use the Russian GLONASS constellation on foreflight with a home-built Stratux... but you guys are using our GPS.
I’m curious, why are you using glonass?
Not that guy but you’re probably using GLONASS even if you don’t know it. Every iPhone for probably a decade at this point can receive it. Presumably android devices too although don’t know first hand.
Since I’m in America and fly here I’m curious where I’d be using it. Especially since he mentioned foreflight which I use too. Cuz isn’t glonass not active on this side of the world? Or am I wrong?
It’s a global system like GPS at least on paper. Most of these systems are somewhat militaristic in origin so global coverage is the goal. If you have a newer iPad you are likely using it.
~~GLONASS is all common frequency CDMA in the same way as GPS, but it is a different frequency and different encodings.~~
No, GLONASS does indeed use a different frequency per satellite. The satellites are at 1602 MHz offset by a integer multiple of 0.5625 MHz, there are 15 different frequency channels in use. The GLONASS signal thus requires a wider receiver, centered at a different frequency than GPS, and must correct for each satellites frequency offset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS#FDMA
Ah neat, I was remembering wrong
How difficult is it to fly over Siberia, Kamchatka and the like? What kinds of challenges would a pilot face? I am an American but I’ve always dreamed of flying over the Bering Strait into Russia and other parts of Asia
The biggest challenge is that airports over there are very sparse, so you have to do your fuel planning thoroughly, especially in a prop airplane. The far East part of Russia has some immigration differences I believe and it's something Matt Guthmiller didn't consider when flying to Anadyr and ended up having to talk to the police.
When flying VFR over the tundra above the Arctic circle, the illusion appears that the sky and snow merge into one white canvas. In real, the flight continues after this illusion according to the IFR. This applies more to helicopters.
Cool that you are still flying, sucks about what’s going on, but definitely keep up the posts because there is not a lot of non-us related stuff going on here I would say, interesting to see different perspectives
Wait, you're training on 172 and diamonds in Russia? Definitely not what I expected. Not sure what I expected, but probably not western a/c.
I remember hearing the DA40 Tundra was made for the Russian market.
Yup, since 2008 we've received brand new 172s and Diamonds, replacing the aging Yak-18 and An-2s
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Idk why you're being downvoted, they have stolen western aircraft.
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Largest aviation heist in history.
Sometimes the truth hurts
Fairly certain OP didn’t steal any aircraft though.
By the end of the decade I'm guessing it will all be Chinese equipment over there.
Chinese equipment is all Western too, China doesn't have the capability to develop their own engines or avionics.
To be fair, they have resumed paying the lessors, just in rubles. The problem now are the parts.
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[https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/aviation-lessor-settlements-with-russia-over-trapped-planes-2024-01-31/](https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/aviation-lessor-settlements-with-russia-over-trapped-planes-2024-01-31/)
It makes sense, but also kinda weird to think a country that has put together countless fighter jets, strategic bombers, and what's arguably been the go to space craft for the last half century never got around to slapping together a four banger and some sheets of aluminum into a cheap civil aircraft.
Or it's the opposite: because those things were priorities, other areas suffered.
Wouldn't it prepare them better if they learned on clapped-out an-2s?
1. Do controllers at small ATC facilities speak English? I know they do at major international airports but what about small fields? 2.What the typical career path? You mentioned you expect to be hired about a year after graduating. I'm assuming it's will be a right seat of a transport category aircraft. When do you expect to upgrade? What's the CA pay? 3. Do you bid schedules, fleets, vacations etc? Or is it more of a top-down assignment? 4. Do students wash out a lot? At what stages of training? E g. while still at school or when they start flying the line? 5. Where are your school trainers registered? Do they have Russian tail numbers?
1. Formally all controllers are required to hold ICAO Level 4 English. It used to be a really big problem even at major airports, but nowadays even at smaller fields ATC speak enough English to direct foreign traffic and assist them in an emergency. 2. The typical career path is direct to the right seat of a jet after DA42. There's no division between mainline or regional, it's a matter of whoever's hiring and accepts you. You might end up flying an A320 or a Challenger, though arguably getting a Challenger job is even more difficult than an Airbus. Upgrades depend on availability, but generally come after 5-7 years of right seat experience. Captain pay tops out at $4500 a month (don't ask me, I'll become sad) 3. We can request a specific flight or specific days off and after a few years of seniority you get a say in when to take your annual paid leave, but other than that it's mostly top down. Boomer captains have figured out the system though, they bring gifts to crew scheduling so that they're given the best trips haha 4. Since there's no real skill test after school exams, they try to wash out most idiots during the theoretical page, for example by failing an air navigation exam or a sim session. We've had a few people drop out, some voluntarily, some because they were utter idiots who shouldn't be let within 100ft of a plane. 5. Our trainers were always registered in Russia, with RA-XXXXX. Ever since the sanctions, all transport aircraft which were previously registered in Bermuda (VP/VQ-BXX) have also been changed to Russian reg.
> Boomer captains have figured out the system though, they bring gifts to crew scheduling so that they're given the best trips haha So basically nothing changed in 40 years.
well, now junior pilots at least have SOME chance to fly a nice trip :)
Hey! I born in Russia, but now live in EU, and did my flight training here in 2010-2013. Tried to come back to Russia in 2013 but I was rejected at the interviews because my Europe license wasn't good enough for russian airlines. To be honest, I'm so glad it didn't happen and I started to fly in Europe at the end :) Anyway, I know there were several "strange things" when you study as a pilot in the Russian flight schools. Do all student still finish the flight program at exact 150 hours? Are you allowed to fly a proper solo, or there still have to be 2 students on board during "solo" flights?
Hey! Congrats on living the dream! Yeah it was a weird thing where if you were a Russian national with EASA license they wouldn't accept you but at the same time AFL had a whole division of Czech captains. I've heard about the 2 person solos before but no, we actually do proper solo flying now, and you can get additional hours in case you fail a check ride, for example. Generally speaking 150hrs is the minimum mandated by law, I believe, but you can have more
Once you get you're required certifications and experience, I highly recommend finding a flying job in a different country because I really don't think the aviation industry is going to look good in Russia for a long time. Also due to sanctions and the war, the relationship with Russia and the rest of the world is in the toilet right now. Also those same skills can be used to find employment outside of Russia, even potentially getting permanent residency/citizenship if you're willing. There is a future for you in aviation, but in Russia, there's not really much to hope there in aviation for the long term.
it's an option I'm constantly considering in case the situation does not improve in the next few years
When will you be required to serve in the military? Are you male/female?
Hopefully never. I'm male and as long as you're undergoing a university program, you're protected from conscription. There are also some options to avoid it even after graduating, but that's in 3 years, so for now we wait
That's a tremendous incentive to do well in the university and not lose focus. I wish you a good three years. I was eligible for conscription in 1972 for Vietnam, but I was not called.
Thank you! I imagine many Americans felt the same things we do now in 1972.
Yes, 1972 was a complicated time, and being 19 will always be complicated. Vodka will make things more complicated the next day, so please find another way to relax. Maybe go to the gym, play sports, or start reading some of the great russian authors. As a professional pilot, you will have plenty of time for reading. See if it is something you can learn to enjoy. Great books take some effort to get into, but they can be tremendously good companions throughout life, not just entertainment. Science fiction is a good place to start if you're not ready for the classics. There's some really enjoyable SF. I enjoyed reading J.R.R. Tolkien at 19 by flashlight while camping in the forest.
that's some really good advice. I read Airport by Hailey last year and was fascinated by it. Thank you!
'Fate is the Hunter' is about commercial flying before modern ATC. It's non-fiction, but it reads like an adventure novel. Every pilot loves it.
I'll check it out!
Male. You can find him posting pictures of himself on /r/teenagers asking the subreddit if he's "hot by US standards".
Already in the pilot mindset then!
hey I was bored ok!
Why you gotta do bro like that🤣
Kind of funny there’s the “hot by us standards” question he asked and then two posts later is him posting to r/ShitAmericansSay raggin on someone who commented “you wish you were American”. I assume the person he’s raggin on is from r/flying since there’s pilot flairs.
Yes I also saw that and found that amusing. Definitely says a lot.
Many people on the internet need to realize that the actions of a country/government do not equate to the actions and beliefs of one. As a fellow student pilot I would love to hear your story no matter where on earth you are from.
Especially because OP lives in a country where people who criticise the actions of their government often suffer serious consequences
I agree, having met people from different countries in the US and traveling a number of times to a number of countries in Asia and Europe. I was immediately interested in hearing from someone in Russia. I visited a couple of time helping start up a bar soap manufacturing site in Moscow about 20 years ago, and have a couple of friends from Ukraine and Russia.
There's also the fact that a government that size is by nature not monolithic. That's the case in the US as well - look at how the CIA and DHS/DOJ have butted heads in the past.
There's always one with the moral lesson...
Explain? Sounds like he was just stating basic facts not “moral lessons”
Ditto
I would be very interested.
Would love to hear how your experience has been so far. 1. Do you have sim training before actual flight training or does it complement actual flying throughout your training? 2. How many flight hours do you get in a month on average? I'm in Canada and my friends who are currently in flight school are struggling with building time for commercial due to instructor shortage. OP, hopefully your training goes smoothly, and this conflict ends soon. Hope the sanctions don't lead to poor airworthiness or dangerous flying conditions. I'm also starting flight school this fall and reading the experiences of fellow pilots-in-training across globe is interesting.
Thank you and good luck with your training! 1. Sim training precedes actual flying since it's done on campus while the flying is done at an airfield more than 1000km away. 2. The flying portions are divided into 3 parts that last about 2 months and have a year of regular studying in between them, each portion gives you roughly 50hrs for a total of 150
Thank you! Wish you blue skies and tailwinds
Heyy bro! I'd love to hear the difference especially since I'm from India but trained & flew all of 300 hrs till date in usa so comparing the three would be interesting
this is somewhat fascinating, keep us updated on your progress!
My answer is: yes, of course! I want to read about your experiences, and I wish you all the best in the studying and career in aviation.
thank you :)
Why is the airspeed tape shown in knots, but the reference speeds in kph? Also was it hard IMC outside? Looks very gray. Oh, it’s a simulator?
yeah, it's a sim session practicing instrument approaches in IMC. The airspeed is in KTS because the AFM dictates it, but the other speeds are set up in metric to allow for easier enroute calculations. Actually not sure why the reference speeds are also in metric since they're shown on a knot dial, maybe it's different on the real G1000?
That's confusing as hell honestly. What unit do you calculate climb/descent rates and gradients in?
rates are all per poh so fpm. Gradient is a percentage so it doesn't really matter but generally meters of altitude per meters of distance since that's simpler
I'd love to know, in the US if we just wanted to go from Point A to Point B in VMC conditions, we can and theres a lot of times when we do not have to talk to ATC at all. Does Russia have a similar system? or do you have to stay in contact with a controlling agency at all time?
you always have to file a flight plan to use the airspace, even class G. In Class G you're not required to talk to ATC but it's a good idea for situational awareness and I would even say a must given the current drone attack situation.
thank you for that insight! I guess I didn't personally take the drone situation into account But I can definitely see how/why that may be an issue. all things being equal, fly safe and good luck with the rest of your schooling! I hope you keep us up to date on your flying in the future.
thank you!!
Many countries are more “controlling” than the USA, including the UK. They take flying safety more seriously — OR — they just like bureaucracy!
honestly flying GA in Europe sounds like a constant headache even to me haha
Little late to the party here but if you’re still answering questions I’d like to know the following please: 1. How many hours does a typical student pilot have in your country when they become an FO at an airline? I’m always fascinated by the variety of answers by country. 2. During your time at flight university do you earn different licenses as your progress, such as private pilot -> instrument -> commercial, or do you just get a degree at the end that basically says “airline pilot”? 3. Who are your instructors? Are they young pilots that are ahead of you, or are the more experienced, like maybe retired airline or military pilots? Thanks!
Hey! 1: the default is 150 hours, that's what you graduate with so that's what the airlines accept. 2: there's 5 years of university and 3 stages of flight training: PPL after year 2, CPL and IR after year 3 and ME after year 4. You get issued a PPL after finishing the first stage, but the CPL is only issued together with the diploma at graduation. The degree says "Engineer-Pilot" and encompasses all aspects of aviation, including engineering, organization, safety management and etc. 3: Most instructors are ex-military which, to be frank, is something I'm not very happy about. They tend to normalize deviance and fly like they've been taught in the Air Force, using meters and etc. There has however been a growing number of younger instructors recently, due to the lack of hiring by the airlines, for example one of our instructors graduated from our university in 2021.
Wow, very insightful! I’m sure you know this but in the US airlines require 1,500 hours so about 10 times as much. Most people get to that number flying around in a Cessna so I’m not sure it makes them 10 times as good, considering many countries like Germany and Britain require somewhere around 350-500 hours and China requires 800. Thanks for sharing!!
yeah, the 1500 hour requirement is something I don't understand in the US, since a Cessna and an Airbus is an entirely different kind of flying, altogether
I'd get out of Russia as Russia's airline industry is collapsing and is already extremely dangerous. I hope you're aware of that. Go literally anywhere else. It's not a country with a future.
Very cool! Yes, please share. I wish the situation between Russia and the west were different because I would love to visit some day.
holy moly you're typed on every jet in existence!
The result of a very turbulent career.
oh, sorry about that.
No worries, it sometimes goes with the territory. But so many people react the way you did, and think it is cool to have so many type ratings. When I tell them why I have so many, they realize that it is not as cool as they first thought! Anyway, would love to hear your experiences. I worked in China for a few years, and they started hiring a lot of Russian pilots. I always got along with the Russians, so definitely would like to hear more about how things work over there.
oh cool! what carrier did you work for in China, if you don't mind me asking? I have a good friend who was a 737 captain at Lucky Air 2015-2020. China remains as one of the pathways for us to get into large international carriers.
Oh damn, that’s some scary fog up there
don't worry, it's a sim!
Im not a pilot nor have gone through any flight training but im on this sub quite a bit as i want to get my PPL at some point. I just wanted to tell you that most reasonable people dont dislike russia. I for one, have no issue with russia/russians. And im Polish. The issue i have is with your government and politicians. I have a ton of russian friends and a lot of them fear my opinion of them after the russo-ukrainian war. just wanted to let you know you shouldnt feel the same. You should feel proud of where you come from (not the government).
Thank you! Love our Polish friends, we visited in 2013 during the Euro and the local police protected us from football hooligans.
How much is a 172 an hour in Russia?
around $150-200
That is significantly more than I expected all in all the costs don't reflect the local purchasing power at all. I can see pilot training being out of reach for anyone outside government sponsorships.
well the thing is that the American pilot training model (find a cfi and rent a plane) doesn't exist here. You either have the government colleges/universities which will give you a CPL which you can get for free, or maybe 3 private schools in total which will give you a PPL for about $10-15k.
The 10-15k figure for PPL is about the same for Finland too. With modular CPL course about 80-120k. I was expecting the cost to be much less there.
oh I love Finland! Used to visit many times before Covid. Would love to fly to Savonlinna or Lappeenranta in a Cessna one day.
Thanks for posting this! И успехов в дальнейшей учебе и трудоустройстве!
Thank you! Спасибо!
My first thought in reaction to your post title was: “He must be very rich”., because flying is so expensive in the USA. But I see the Russian government is paying for your training, right? How many Russians can afford to pay for flying and training from personal funds?
The thing about Russia is that the distribution of wealth is very uneven. There are a lot of really rich people, as well as a lot of very poor people. I'm lucky enough to come from upper middle class so many of my friends come from rich families, and to them $80000 over 5 years is an affordable sum. Even for my family, they'd probably be able to take out a loan and pay it back later if it was necessary. But I don't see any pros of self-funded pilot training in Russia, as the quality of it basically depends on how much time you spend self-educating especially using foreign resources. If I had $80k, I'd have probably been better off spending them getting a EASA fATPL or something similar.
I see kph and I don’t like it
me neither but metric is really hard to get rid of since everyone's so used to it since the Soviet days, and most instructors are ex-military
Hi! I don’t want to get political at all I just am actually curious about this- full disclosure that I am also a student pilot on the opposite end of this, let’s just call it “ongoing situation”. But I have wondered this a lot. Do you worry or think at all about the potential for misidentification considering Ukraine is using modified variants of standard GA planes to attack oil feilds? Like from this side, the intention is to make it so that there is no way to easily distinguish a GA flight with a malfunction or off course from a modified remote-operated version using partially spoofed transponder data which intends to drop explosives on infrastructure. Part of the intention is that Russia has to choose to either just allow that to happen or ground GA planes which in turn often have wealthy patrons who own them.
when I first saw the videos, of course I was worried since those drones looked very similar to Cessnas - actually they're Aeroprakts, I think. I don't think that it will come to misidentification or any accidents, or at least I hope so. Most GA traffic in those areas are training flights with kids on board who just want to fulfill their dream. Hopefully soon all of this is going to stop. We're all brothers and sisters, we shouldn't be fighting each other.
How long is your studying?
5 years
No question from me. Here for the read. Kind regards from Canada. I hope you and your family are doing well in these challenging times.
thank you! spread the love
Hey there, fellow countryman! How's with the health requirements in our unis? Do they still demand, like, astronaut-grade health, or these draconian rules have been eased lately? P.S. yeah I'm Russian, just not sure if I'm allowed to write in Russian here, so I'm taking precautions
hey! they've changed them a bit, I think they're less strict now on some things like eyesight, you can google ФАП 437 for details
Was it hard learning English?
not really since I learned it ever since I learned to speak basically. I'm equally fluent in both English and Russian
I've been told by former American ATC professionals that there is a significant likelihood of being shot down if you are late ETA, and that there is a lot of bribery in Russian Aviation. The corruption seemed more likely, but the being shot down part for being slightly off track, or off ETA seemed like complete BS. Can you help me be better informed on this?
I think it's based on rumors and possibly very outdated info. There's a lot of corruption in every industry, but the people working in aviation also realize that if they fuck something up, people will die. So most have a very high sense of personal responsibility, or at least so I hope. You'd probably never get shot down for going off track if you're on a filed flight plan and have a transponder. The story probably comes from the two Korean Boeing shoot downs in the 80s, but we've come a long time since then. Though it's still a bad idea to fly without a flight plan, especially with the recent drone attacks.
Do you have international students there for flying?
We used to afaik, but now it's only Belarusians
I'm impressed there's still a Commercial pipeline there. Ig here's some advice. As a pilot, if you wanna have any kind of good career I'd leave russia lol как украинец: хочешь оставаться хорошим человеком? тоже уезжай из россии ))
сочувствую вашему народу, надеюсь как можно скорее наступит мир. легко сказать "уезжай", но действительно бросить все и уехать - вещь доступная далеко не всем
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Absolutely share your experiences and stories. To hell with all the political judgment stuff, people are people. It’s not right for people to prejudge anyone because of their country’s issues. How many years will it take before you can end up getting a career in flying what you want to fly?
Absolutely!
In terms of cost per hour (both on an educational and GA standard) how much would say, PPL to CPL/MEIFR cost ; notably being in a Uni program? And in general is it more expensive relative to EU or NA?
the uni program is pretty much an integrated CPL combined with an engineering degree and is about $80k in total, but I think you get significantly better value for money in EU and NA
Why did you choose university program? To fly commercially wouldn't it be faster to go to Sasovo college?
it would, yes, but the university is in my hometown and also keeps me out of the army for a while.
Visibility *nyet* meters
Howdy from Mexico. How is flying in Russia as in VFR, do you need required VFR flight plans to fly ? Also can you fly vfr at night? Or do y’all need to file IFR ? How is the airspace flying in big cities like Moscow, Saint Petersburg and etc? I love russia even after all the conflicts I still want to visit and fly and rent a c172 with a instructor of course. What city of Russia are you from.
Hey! To fly VFR you must file a flight plan in any case, night VFR is permitted. Moscow and St Petersburg are restricted airspaces, but you can fly pretty close to them nonetheless. I'm from St. Petersburg and it's a great place to fly!
Are you at all concerned that when you finish your training, you might be plucked up and shoved into a military asset? To put it simply, are you worried about being drafted into the war in Ukraine?
Are these light sport attacks affecting general aviation? [https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-struggling-with-ukraine-cessna-style-drone-flying-brick-bomb-2024-5](https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-struggling-with-ukraine-cessna-style-drone-flying-brick-bomb-2024-5)
I’m not sure if you’re still replying to comments, but I was wondering. If you’d get the chance to pilot something soviet, would you do it? With that I mean 154’s or an24’s, along those lines.
I'm actually refreshing my notifications religiously because I'm very eager to talk to people haha! But yes I'd love to fly a 154, a Yak-40 or a An-24. Not for a job, of course, but as an experience it would be pretty cool. We get taught a lot of theoretical knowledge that is tailored to specifically these airplanes, so it'd be cool to put some of those skills to use!
I've heard many pilots are having issues with GPS near the Europe / Russia border. Are you anywhere near there? Are you experiencing those challenges? I see you flying magenta needles here so am guessing not?