Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
]. As to the long term pariah State : is Russia seriously considering not flying internationally for many years and turning into a very large North Korea ?
Don't forget they have a huge territory of their own to cover plus some other states which still allow them in and also have not cancelled their airworthiness certificates. So first of all they will need to assure domestic travel which they appear to be doing. And before the end of the cold war the situation was pretty much like that, they only had Soviet airliners and flew them all over the world. Right now they will be restricted to fly them within their borders and whoever accepts them, but they will continue flying those.
I am not sure how many TU154's e.t.c. have actually been scrapped or are simply in "storage" of some form. Same goes for IL86's. Reactivating them may take some time but should be possible.