What Happened To Aeroflot’s Airbus A310s?

The Airbus A310
is a wide-body aircraft built between 1981 and 1988 and

remains in limited service in Iran, Turkey (as freighters), and possibly Afghanistan
. Only 255 Airbus A310s were built. Of these, 15 entered service with the Russian flag carrier Aeroflot
as some of the airline’s first Western aircraft. This is what became of Aeroflot’s once-shiny new Western A310 aircraft.

Aeroflot’s A310-300s scrapped and derelict

Aeroflot has the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous and lethal airline that has ever operated – by far. Around 8,231 passengers have died in Aeroflot crashes since 1923 (around five times more than the next most deadly airline). Most of these incidents occurred during the Soviet Union and with Soviet-produced aircraft (which always had questionable reliability). After transitioning to Western jets, Aeroflot went from the most dangerous airline to one of the safest.

As fate has it, the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen the Russian aviation industry heavily sanctioned and unable to procure or officially service Western jets. This is forcing Russia to attempt to restart its own domestic airliner production.

Russia has seen an uptick in aviation accidents
in the last few years and there are fears of Aeroflot returning to the bad old Soviet times.

Fate of Aeroflot’s A310-300s (per ATDB.aero):

• Derelict: 7
• Scrapped: 3
• Crashed: 2
• Active: 3 (with ULS Airlines Cargo)

In December 1992, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Aeroflot rapidly moved to acquire more reliable Western passenger jets (although Russian airlines still managed to crash two of them). The first Airbus A310 entered Aeroflot service in March 1994 and the airline assigned an elite group of around two dozen pilots to operate them. Today, none of these jets remain in Aeroflot service.

Cirium (an aviation analytics company) lists Aeroflot as having operated 11 Airbus A310-300s
, while Planespotters says the company operated 14. Another website, ATDB.aero, lists 15. Of the 15 A310s ATBD.aero lists Aeroflot as operating, seven as derelict, two as destroyed (including Aeroflot Flight 593), three as scrapped, and three remain flying as freighters today.

Two Aeroflot (and former Aeroflot) A310s crashed

S7 Airlines Flight 778

A few A310s were passed on to the domestic Russian carrier S7 Airlines
, and one of them (Flight 778) crashed in July 2006. The incident happened when the A310 flew from Moscow bound for Irkutsk. The S7-operated aircraft carrying 203 people overshot the runway as it was landing in Irkutsk and crashing through the airport’s concrete perimeter fence. It burst into flames and killed 125 people (78 people survived the incident).

This remains S7’s deadliest disaster, and the result was attributed to pilot error (the pilot unintentionally moved the left engine’s throttle lever forward while reducing the thrust reverser of the right engine. This caused the left engine to produce more thrust, and the crew were unable to resolve the situation before it crashed.

Aeroflot Flight 593

The

most well-known Aeroflot A310-300 was Aeroflot Flight 593
(registered F-OGQS), which catastrophically crashed on 23 March 1994. The aircraft stalled due to pilot error after a minor deactivated the autopilot. Flight data and cockpit voice recordings show that the relief captain’s teenage children were in the cockpit at the time of the accident.

It was ascertained that the pilot’s 15-year-old son partially disengaged the aircraft’s autopilot control before the autopilot disengaged completely. The aircraft rolled into a steep bank and entered a near-vertical dive. The pilot managed to pull the aircraft out of the dive and level it up; however, by overcompensating, he stalled the A310 and entered into a spin. Finally, the pilots once again managed to wrest control of the airplane, but by then, it had descended beyond a safe altitude to initiate a recovery, and it crashed into the mountain.

Aeroflot Flight 593 took off from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport en route to Kai Tak Airport (the old airport in Hong Kong). All 63 passengers and 12 crew members perished when the aircraft crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range in Russia.

Aeroflot’s A310-300 still active

According to ATDB.aero, three former Aeroflot A310-300 are still active (registered F-OGQT, F-OQU, and F-OGQQ). These were converted into Airbus A310-300F
freighters in 2005 and operated by Emirates SkyCargo. Now, they are flown by ULS Airlines Cargo (which acquired them in 2009). ULS Airlines Cargo (formerly Kuzu Airlines Cargo) is a Turkish cargo airline based in Istanbul, with its main base at Istanbul Airport.

“ULS Airlines cargo offers all-inclusive cargo charter services to airlines, charter brokers and freight forwarders. In addition to standard charter services, ULS Airlines also performs special cargo transportation and offers professional service.” – ULS Airlines Cargo

ULS was established in early 2004 and acquired the three aircraft from Emirates SkyCargo in 2008 (these appear to remain the only aircraft the company is operating).