The Federal Transportation Surveillance Agency (aka Rostransnadzor) and the Federal Air Fleet Agency (aka Rosaviation) declared on February 12, 2007 that it was no longer legal for a number of Russian air carriers to perform chartered or one-time flights to the EU, reports RosBusinessConsulting referring to the spokesperson for the Russian Federation Department of Transport.

These limitations have been caused by a lot of complaints from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy and Transport placed with Rostransnadzor and Rosaviation in January 2007 after the SAFA examinations carried out in 2004-2006.

There are nine airlines on this list altogether: Aero Rent, Tatarstan, Atlant-Soyuz, Aviacon Zitotrans, Center Avia, Gazpromavia, Lukoil, Russkoe Nebo, and UTair., with Aviacon Zitotrans and UTair operating in Ural Federal District.

These carriers had been informed about their shortcomings but failed to comply with the requirements of Rostransnadzor, as not all of them actually produced a report on those drawbacks or a plan for eliminating them. ‘The problems are still there, so they keep giving the European Commission very serious grounds for blacklisting these companies,’ the spokesperson for the Russian Federation Department of Transport says. The airlines now have to provide Rostransnadzor with all the information on the problems and the ways of dealing with them as soon as possible.