Economy

Aeroflot feels the chill as airspace is closed to Russian aircraft

Planet Business: A Twitter account plots the busy movements of oligarch’s private jets

Cold day in Moscow: Aeroflot’s passengers planes parked at Sheremetyevo airport, outside the Russian capital. Photograph: Pavel Golovkin/AP

Laura Slattery's face
Laura Slattery
Sat Mar 5 2022 - 05:15

Image of the week: Aero-flop

It is fair to say that Aeroflot has flown through a great deal of turbulence during its 99-year history. Now it's barely flying at all. The closing of European Union, Canadian and US airspace to Russian aircraft makes the flag carrier and country's largest airline one of the highest-profile Russian businesses to be targeted by economic sanctions imposed on Putin's regime following its invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, Aeroflot was among the first Russian brands to be dropped as a corporate sponsor when Manchester United terminated a deal worth tens of millions. Buying – or, more relevantly, selling – its stock then became next to impossible outside Russia after overseas stock exchanges suspended trading in well-known Russian companies, including Aeroflot. While the private jets of at least some oligarchs were still burning fuel in the skies, it was the sight of Aeroflot's passenger planes parked at a snowy Sheremetyevo airport outside Moscow that best symbolised western efforts to cut Russia off from the rest of the world.

In numbers: Ocean drive

4,000

In another week, news that roughly this number of Volkswagen vehicles – including Porsches, Audis, Bentleys and Lamborghinis – have sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic might have made a bigger splash.

220

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Nautical miles off the coast of Portugal's Azores islands that the Felicity Ace cargo ship caught fire in the Atlantic last month, with all crew members evacuating. It finally sank on Tuesday.

€362 million

Estimated value of the luxury cars on board the ship, which has now found a watery mass parking space some 3,000 metres beneath the sea.

Getting to know: the Fitbit Ionic smartwatch

The Ionic smartwatch from Fitbit, sold between 2017 and 2020, features a 3.5cm colour LCD and a polyurethane band available in several colours. It will monitor your activity, your heart rate and your sleep. Alas, not every owner of a Fitbit Ionic smartwatch has been getting a full night’s sleep lately. In Exhibit 897 in the prosecution’s case against technology – or is it the case against exercise? – the fitness-tracking device supremos at Fitbit have been forced to recall 1.7 million Ionic smartwatches after reports that its battery was overheating and burning some users. Although this will certainly make some people run faster, it will only be in the direction of the nearest water source. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall with the warning that the watch’s lithium-ion battery can overheat, causing a “burn hazard”, after Google-owned Fitbit received 174 such reports, including cases of 118 burns. Not ideal.

The list: Abramovich’s jet spots

Florida teenager Jack Sweeney made a name for himself by publicly posting the movements of Elon Musk's jets, but now he has turned his attention to the aviation status symbols of Russian oligarchs, including six jets and helicopters owned by Roman Abramovich. So where, according to @RUOligarchJets, have they been this week?

1 Dubai: Abramovich's jet P4-BDL took off near Moscow on Monday and landed in Dubai almost five hours later. In-flight snacks were not disclosed.

2 St Kitts and Nevis: Also on Monday, Abramovich's helicopter M-SOLA took off near Charlestown in St Kitts and Nevis, "likely" from a yacht, and went on to make a few more stops in the Caribbean.

3 In and out of Moscow: LX-RAY, another jet belonging to the Chelsea football club owner (at the time of writing), flew from Moscow to Baku in Azerbaijan then back to Moscow, before proceeding to...

4 Turkey: Not yet done on the carbon emissions front, LX-RAY took off near Istanbul on Wednesday and landed 35 minutes away in Ankara.

5 Latvia: The aptly named Abramovich jet LX-LUX was Riga-bound on Sunday, because why not?

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