PJSC AeroflotRussian Airlines (, ), commonly known as Aeroflot ( or ; , , ), is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Russia. Aeroflot is headquartered in the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow, with its hub being Sheremetyevo International Airport. The Federal Agency for State Property Management, an agency of the Government of Russia, owns 73.77% of the company, with the rest of the shares being public float.
During the time of the Soviet Union, Aeroflot was one of the largest airlines in the world. In 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Aeroflot was divided into approximately 400 regional airlines informally known as Babyflots and was restructured into an open joint-stock company.
It has a market share in Russia of approximately 42.3%. Including subsidiaries, the company carried 55.3 million passengers in 2024. Aeroflot also owns Rossiya Airlines and Pobeda, a low-cost carrier. In 2022, the airline was banned from flying into the European Union.
The Aeroflot fleet, excluding subsidiaries, includes 171 airplanes: 112 Airbus planes and 59 Boeing planes. The company plans on making the Yakovlev MC-21 its flagship plane, with deliveries expected to start in 2027.
History
Aeroflot: early history (1932–1945)
In 1933, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Congress set out development plans for the civil aviation industry for the following five years, with air transportation becoming one of the primary means of transportation in the Soviet Union, linking all major cities. The government also implemented plans to expand the Soviet aircraft industry to reduce its dependence on foreign-built aircraft; in 1930, 50% of aircraft flying services in the Soviet Union were of foreign manufacture. The expansion of air routes that had taken shape in the late 1920s, continued into the 1930s. Local (MVL) services were greatly expanded in Soviet Central Asia and the Soviet Far East, which by the end of the second five-year plan in 1937 was in length out of a total network of . The agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany relating to Deruluft expired on 1 January 1937. It wasn't renewed, which led to the joint venture carrier ceasing operations on 1 April 1937. On that date, Aeroflot began operations on the Moscow to Stockholm route, and began operating the ex-Deruluft route from Leningrad to Riga utilising Douglas DC-3s and Tupolev ANT-35s (PS-35s). Flights from Moscow to Berlin, via Königsberg, were suspended until 1940, when they were restarted by Aeroflot and Deutsche Luft Hansa as a result of the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and they continued until the opening of the Eastern Front in World War II in 1941.
Under the Third Five-Year Plan, which began in 1938, civil aviation development continued, with improvements to airport installations being made and the construction of airports being commenced. In addition to the expansion of services between the Soviet Union's main cities, local routes (MVL) were also expanded, and by 1940, 337 MVL routes had operations on a scheduled basis. Serial production of the Lisunov Li-2 (license-built Douglas DC-3) commenced in 1939, and the aircraft became the backbone of the Aeroflot fleet on mainline trunk routes. The day after Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, on 22 June 1941, the Sovnarkom placed the Civil Air Fleet under the control of Narkomat, leading to the full-scale mobilisation of Aeroflot crews and technicians for the Soviet war effort. Before the invasion, the Aeroflot network extended over , and amongst the longest routes being operated from Moscow were those to Tbilisi (via Baku), Tashkent and Vladivostok. Aeroflot aircraft, including PS-35s and PS-43s, were based at Khodynka Aerodrome in Moscow; and important missions undertaken by Aeroflot aircraft and crews included flying supplies to the besieged cities of Leningrad, Kyiv, Odessa and Sevastopol. During the Battle of Stalingrad, between August 1942 and February 1943, Aeroflot operated 46,000 missions to Stalingrad, ferrying in of supplies and 30,000 troops. Following the defeat of the Wehrmacht, 80 Junkers Ju 52/3ms were captured from the Germans, and were placed into the service of the Civil Air Fleet, and after the war were placed into regular service across the Soviet Union. Whilst civil operations in European Russia west of the front line, which ran from Leningrad to Moscow to Rostov-on-Don, were prevented from operating because of the war, services from Moscow to the Urals, Siberia, Central Asia, and other regions which were not affected by the war, continued. By the end of the war, Aeroflot had flown 1,595,943 special missions, including 83,782 at night, and carried 1,538,982 men and of cargo.
Aeroflot during the Cold War (1946–91)
At the end of World War II, the Soviet government repaired and rebuilt essential airport infrastructure, and it strengthened the Aeroflot units in the European part of the Soviet Union. In 1945, Aeroflot carried 537,000 passengers, compared with 359,000 in 1940. The government made it a priority in the immediate postwar years to expand services from Moscow to the capital of each of the Republics of the Soviet Union, in addition to important industrial centres on the country and transferred to Aeroflot many Lisunov Li-2s, which became the backbone of the Aeroflot fleet. The Ilyushin Il-12 entered service on Aeroflot's all-Union scheduled routes on 22 August 1947, and supplemented already existing Li-2 services. The original Ilyushin Il-18 entered service around the same time as the Il-12, and was operated on routes from Moscow to Yakutsk, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Alma Ata, Tashkent, Sochi, Mineralnye Vody and Tbilisi. By 1950, the Il-18 was withdrawn from service, replaced by Il-12s. MVL and general aviation services received a boost in March 1948, when the first Antonov An-2s were delivered and entered service in Central Russia. The development of MVL services over the latter years was attributed to the An-2, which Aeroflot operated in all areas of the Soviet Union.
Aeroflot's route network had extended to by 1950, and it carried 1,603,700 passengers, of freight, and of mail that year. Night flights began in the same year, and the fifth five-year plan, covering the period 1951–1955, emphasised Aeroflot's expansion of nighttime operations, which vastly improved aircraft utilisation. By 1952, 700 destinations in the Soviet Union received regular flights from Aeroflot. On 30 November 1954, the Ilyushin Il-14 entered service, and the aircraft took a leading role in the operation of Aeroflot's all-Union services. The number of passengers carried in 1955 increased to 2,500,000, whilst freight and mail carriage also increased, to 194,960 and 63,760 tons, respectively. By this time, Aeroflot's route network covered a distance of . The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held in 1956, included plans for Aeroflot services to be dramatically increased 3.8 times, with a target of 16,000,000 annual passengers by 1960. To meet these goals, Aeroflot introduced higher-capacity turbojet and turbine-prop aircraft on key domestic routes and on services to Aeroflot destinations abroad. A major step for Aeroflot occurred on 15 September 1956 when the Tupolev Tu-104 jet aircraft entered service on the Moscow–Omsk–Irkutsk route, marking the world's first sustained jet airline service. The airline began international flights with the type on 12 October 1956 under the command of Boris Bugayev with flights from Moscow to Prague. The aircraft placed Aeroflot in an enviable position, as airlines in the West had operated throughout the 1950s with large piston-engined aircraft. By 1958, the route network covered , and the airline carried 8,231,500 passengers, and 445,600 tons of mail and freight, with fifteen percent of all-Union services being operated by jet aircraft.
Aeroflot introduced the Antonov An-10 and Ilyushin Il-18 in 1959, and together with its existing jet aircraft, the airline was able to extend services on modern aircraft to twenty one cities by 1960. The Tupolev Tu-114, then the world's largest airliner, entered service with the Soviet carrier on 24 April 1961 on the Moscow-Khabarovsk route; covering a distance of in 8 hours 20 minutes. The expansion of the Aeroflot fleet saw services with modern aircraft being extended to forty-one cities in 1961, with fifty percent of all-Union services being operated by these aircraft. This fleet expansion also saw the number of passengers carried in 1961 skyrocket to 21,800,000. Further expansion came in 1962 when both the Tupolev Tu-124 and Antonov An-24 entered regular service with Aeroflot on various medium and short-haul routes. By 1964, Aeroflot operated direct flights from Moscow to 100 cities, from Leningrad to 44 cities, and from Kyiv to 38 cities. The airline also operated direct flights from Mineralnye Vody to 48 cities across the Soviet Union, denoting the importance of the operation of holiday aircraft services to Aeroflot. Statistics for the same year showed Aeroflot operating an all-Union route network extending over , and carrying 36,800,000 passengers.
By 1966, Aeroflot carried 47,200,000 passengers over a domestic route network of . For the period of the Eighth Five-Year Plan, which ran from 1966 to 1970, Aeroflot carried a total of 302,200,000 passengers, 6.47 billion tons of freight, and 1.63 billion tons of mail. During the five-year plan period, all-Union services were extended over an additional 350 routes; an additional 1,000 MVL routes were begun, and 40 new routes were opened up with all-cargo flights. In 1967, the Ilyushin Il-62 and Tupolev Tu-134 were introduced, and in September 1968, the Yakovlev Yak-40 regional jet began operations on short-haul services. That same year, the Il-62 inaugurated the long-delayed service between Moscow and New York, which finally began in July and was operated jointly by Aeroflot and Pan Am. According to the book The Aeroflot Story: From Russia With Luck: "This business relationship became an acrimonious affair in which both parties complained it had been wronged by the other. Pan Am accused the Soviets of illegally siphoning away Moscow-to-New York passengers, whilst in turn, Aeroflot accused U.S. consular officials in Russia of having steered passengers to Pan Am flights." In 1968, the company opened its first office in the United States.
By 1970, the last year of the five-year plan period, Aeroflot was operating flights to over 3,500 destinations in the Soviet Union, and at the height of the 1970 summer holiday season, the airline was carrying approximately 400,000 passengers per day, and 90% of passengers were being carried on propeller-turbine and jet aircraft. In March 1970, Aeroflot had amassed a route network that was long, a quarter of which covered international destinations. At this time, the carrier had agreements with countries but it only served of them, including destinations. In January 1971, the Central Administration of International Air Traffic () (TsUMVS) was established within the framework of IATA, and became the sole enterprise authorised to operate international flights. Abroad, the airline was known as Aeroflot Soviet Airlines. In 1976, Aeroflot carried its 100 millionth passenger. Its flights were mainly concentrated around the Soviet Union, but the airline also had an international network covering five continents: North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The network included countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Cuba, Mexico, and the People's Republic of China.