Alexander Topchy16:14, 06/02/23

The Russian carrier was helped in this matter by an airline from a country friendly to the Russian Federation, which “unofficially shared a software update and a service bulletin.”

Russian airline Aeroflot has managed to circumvent Western sanctions and update the software on one of its newest aircraft, the Airbus A350. Thanks to this, the board, which stood on the ground for about a year, was able to rise into the sky again.

According to ” Aviatorshchina ” with reference to sources, “Aeroflot” was helped in this matter by “an airline from a friendly country.”

“Aviatorshchina” says that Aeroflot received this airliner with tail number RA-73156 (Bermuda VP-BYF) on February 24, 2022 – the day the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. However, the plane managed to perform only ten flights, and on March 7 it was “parked”, and from mid-April it was transferred to storage.

In May, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued a directive after discovering a software bug in the flight control computer software for the Airbus A350. Due to this error, the fly-by-wire control system gave a signal about the malfunction of both elevator control drives.

“This directive required airlines to update the software of the main flight control computers (the Elevator Computing Unit) to eliminate a potential unsafe condition that could lead to loss of aircraft control,” writes Aviatorshchina.

However, due to sanctions imposed on Russia for its war in Ukraine, Aeroflot was unable to update the software on its latest A350. This is due to the fact that, due to sanctions, Airbus stopped providing technical support for its aircraft, servicing them, supplying spare parts, and closed access to the portal with technical documentation and updates for Russian airlines. Because of this, Aeroflot could not continue to fly on this aircraft.

“But a year later, Aeroflot was still able to comply with the EASA directive and install a software update. In this, the national carrier was helped by an airline from one friendly country – it unofficially shared an update and a service bulletin,” writes Aviatorshchina.

(C)UNIAN 2023