Aeroflot

If you spotted at a large German airport before 2022, you know the picture: an Airbus with the waving Russian flag on the tail and the small winged hammer and sickle emblem on the fuselage. Aeroflot was a regular guest in Frankfurt, Munich or Berlin. Since spring 2022, this subject has disappeared from Europe. This page explains where the airline comes from, what defines its fleet, why it no longer lands in the EU – and how to classify old and new Aeroflot sightings cleanly.

Aeroflot at a glance

Aeroflot is Russia’s national airline, headquartered in Moscow. Its hub is Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport (SVO), from which the airline serves a network at home and abroad. The majority owner is the Russian state. The Aeroflot Group also includes other airlines, among them Rossiya, based in St. Petersburg, and the low-cost subsidiary Pobeda.

Until 2022, Aeroflot was a perfectly normal international network airline: a member of the SkyTeam alliance, with long-haul flights to Asia and the Americas and dense connections to many European capitals. With the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022, this picture changed fundamentally. Today Aeroflot flies mainly domestically and to countries that have not closed their airspace to Russian airlines.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code SU: appears in the flight number, so on departure boards, tickets and in schedules. The code dates from the Soviet era and is still used today.
• ICAO code AFL: appears in the air traffic control flight plan and on flight trackers.
• Callsign AEROFLOT: this is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.

The difference between flight number and callsign often confuses beginners. How the two relate is explained in the article on the difference between callsign and flight number. And if you are interested in the history behind callsigns, you will find more examples in the article on curious airline callsigns.

From Dobroljot to the largest airline in the world

Aeroflot’s roots go back to 1923. That year saw the creation of the company Dobroljot, one of the first airlines of the young Soviet Union. In summer 1923, it began regular flights between Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. February 9, 1923, is still regarded in Russia as the birthday of civil aviation. In 1932, civil aviation activities were combined under the name Aeroflot.

In the Soviet Union, Aeroflot was not an airline in today’s sense. Practically all of the country’s civil aviation ran under this name: scheduled flights, cargo, agricultural flights, medical flights and much more. Measured by fleet and passengers, Aeroflot was the largest airline in the world for decades, with thousands of aircraft and helicopters.

The year 1956 is important for aviation history: Aeroflot deployed the Tupolev Tu-104 and thereby became one of the first airlines in the world to operate scheduled jet service permanently. Types followed such as the Ilyushin Il-62 for long-haul, the Tupolev Tu-154 as the workhorse on medium-haul routes, the Il-86 as the first Soviet widebody jet and finally the Il-96. An overview of these generations is given in the article on Soviet airliners.

A new start after 1991

With the end of the Soviet Union, the old Aeroflot also fell apart. Hundreds of smaller airlines emerged from its regional administrations, often called “Babyflots” in the industry. The Moscow core company was converted into a joint-stock company in 1992 and at times operated as “Aeroflot – Russian International Airlines”. The state remained the majority shareholder.

In the following years, Aeroflot gradually converted its fleet to Western types. At first, individual Airbus and Boeing types were added; later, the Airbus A320 and A321 replaced the Soviet medium-haul jets. In 2003, the airline got a new look, and in 2006 it joined a global alliance as the first Russian airline: SkyTeam. How the three big alliances work is explained in the overview of Star Alliance, oneworld and SkyTeam.

A domestic competitor from that period was Transaero, the second-largest Russian airline, which ceased operations in 2015. The Aeroflot Group then took over some of its leased aircraft.

The fleet: Airbus, Boeing – and Russian hopes

According to publicly available fleet overviews, the main company Aeroflot operates around 170 aircraft (as of 2025), plus the fleets of its subsidiaries. The exact numbers change because aircraft move between the group’s companies and spare parts are scarce. The following table therefore shows the types, not exact numbers.

Type	Use	Spotter hint
Airbus A320 / A320neo	Short- and medium-haul	Largest group in the fleet
Airbus A321 / A321neo	Short- and medium-haul	Longer fuselage, more doors
Airbus A330-300	Long-haul and high-density routes	Two engines, classic widebody jet
Airbus A350-900	Long-haul	Newest widebody type of the airline
Boeing 737-800	Short- and medium-haul	Only Boeing narrowbody
Boeing 777-300ER	Long-haul, leisure destinations	Largest aircraft in the fleet

Aeroflot took delivery of the Airbus A350-900 only shortly before the sanctions; a large share of the ordered examples was later diverted to other airlines. The Boeing 777-300ER flies on long, high-demand routes, and the Airbus A330-300 supplements long-haul. On shorter routes, you encounter the A320 family and the Boeing 737-800.

Aeroflot itself no longer operates a Russian jet: it handed the Sukhoi Superjet 100, which the airline flew from 2011, over to its subsidiary Rossiya. At the same time, in 2022 the group ordered several hundred Russian aircraft – above all the Irkut MC-21, plus more Superjets and the Tu-214. The MC-21 is regarded as the coming flagship; according to its own statements, Aeroflot expects deliveries from 2027. When the types will actually fly in large numbers is an open question.

Sanctions and the EU flight ban in 2022

The break came within a few days. After the Russian attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the United Kingdom announced a landing ban for Aeroflot the same day. On February 27, Germany and Austria closed their airspace to Russian airlines, other countries followed, and at the end of February the entire EU did so. In early March, the USA followed suit. Aeroflot temporarily suspended a large part of its international flights in early March 2022.

The handling of the leased aircraft had particularly far-reaching consequences. Many Airbus and Boeing jets of Russian airlines belonged to Western leasing companies and were registered abroad, often in Bermuda. After the contracts were terminated, a large share of them was transferred to the Russian register even though the original registration had not been cleanly deleted. The EU cited these airworthiness oversight issues, among other things, as grounds for the listing on the Air Safety List. For individual aircraft, Aeroflot later reached agreements with lessors and bought the aircraft. What lies behind leasing and offshore registrations is explained in the articles on aircraft leasing and on registrations in Ireland, Bermuda or Malta.

For operations, that means: Aeroflot keeps flying Western aircraft but can only draw on spare parts and maintenance from the manufacturers Airbus and Boeing to a limited extent. Because of the closed airspaces, long-haul flights sometimes take significantly longer routes. Other Russian airlines are affected too, such as the cargo companies AirBridgeCargo and Volga-Dnepr, which used to be seen regularly in Europe. Something similar applies to the neighboring country: Belavia has not been allowed to use EU airspace since 2021.

How to recognize Aeroflot

The livery is one of the most distinctive in aviation. On the tail, a stylized Russian flag waves in white, blue and red. The light fuselage carries “AEROFLOT” in large blue letters, supplemented by the Cyrillic spelling. The fuselage also carries the winged hammer and sickle emblem – a symbol from the Soviet era that the airline has kept to this day. From 2020, a revised variant with a white base color and larger titles was added, first on the A350.

There are also special liveries: aircraft in SkyTeam livery, retro designs with echoes of earlier Aeroflot colors and anniversary designs. How such liveries come about is shown in the articles on retro liveries and on alliance liveries.

Registrations: RA-, VP-B and VQ-B

For spotters, the registration is particularly interesting with Aeroflot. Russian aircraft carry the prefix RA-. Many leased Airbus and Boeing jets, however, were registered in Bermuda before 2022 and carried registrations with VP-B or VQ-B. After the transfer to the Russian register, there are aircraft that appear in records under two registrations – and photos that still show the old Bermuda registration.

If you are sorting older Aeroflot photos, a close look is therefore worthwhile: note the registration that is actually on the aircraft and, if needed, add a note about a later re-registration. How such changes work is explained in the article on re-registrations.

Spotting Aeroflot today

In the EU, you can no longer see Aeroflot since 2022. Before the sanctions, the airline served Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Hannover and Dresden in Germany, Vienna and seasonally Salzburg and Innsbruck in Austria, and Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland. If you want to photograph Aeroflot today, you have to travel to countries that keep their airspace open to Russian airlines – such as Turkey, the Persian Gulf or Asia. There, Aeroflot shares the apron with airlines such as Turkish Airlines or Air China.

When traveling, as everywhere: find out beforehand where photography at the airport is allowed. In some countries, the rules are much stricter than in Germany. What applies in Germany is summarized in the article Is plane spotting allowed?.

Common mix-ups

• Thinking SU is a country code – SU is purely an Aeroflot airline code, even if it recalls the Soviet Union.
• Taking every flag on a tail for Aeroflot – Rossiya and other Russian airlines use similar motifs. Titles and ICAO code decide.
• Thinking Aeroflot is a SkyTeam member – the membership has been suspended since April 2022.
• Looking for Soviet types at Aeroflot – the Tu-154, Il-86 and Il-96 were retired by the airline long ago.
• Mistaking a Bermuda registration for an error – many Aeroflot jets were registered with VP-B or VQ-B before 2022.
• Confusing Transaero with Aeroflot – Transaero was an independent competitor and has been history since 2015.

Conclusion

Aeroflot is an airline with two stories. One tells of the world’s largest airline, of the Tu-104 as an early jet pioneer and of generations of Soviet airliners. The other begins in 2022: airspace bans, a leasing dispute, a suspended alliance and a Western fleet under sanctions. For spotters in central Europe, Aeroflot has thus gone from an everyday sighting to a subject that exists only while traveling or in your own archive.