Budget airline EasyJet has cancelled the lease of six aircraft leased from a Russian company. The British company did this at the beginning of the war in Ukraine in order not to violate sanctions, although it was not immediately clear whether the lease of the aircraft was not allowed.
The case is remarkable because only known cases of Russian airlines have leased planes in the West so far.
The Russian government no longer allowed those aircraft to leave Russia and Belarus because otherwise, there is a risk that the leasing companies will have the aircraft seized. It concerns hundreds of aircraft from Airbus and Boeing.
The six aircraft that easyJet leased from a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned company GTLK were all of the Airbus A319 types. These had been standing still since March 2020 because the demand for air travel fell due to the corona pandemic. Only a handful of other non-Russian airlines rent planes from GTLK.