And if you read a bit into Russian economic of domestic and international flights you will understand why Aeroflot is not happy with short range jets and constantly cancels flights (not SSJ performed only).
Exactly.
The Russian market has been suffering severe retrenchment/downsizing since the beginning of the international crisis over Ukraine, and the halving of the value of the Rouble and Hryvnia.
Some went under, some like EJ > MOW, stopped altogether.
AFL are looking by all means to keep market share & flying full, which helped them with the disappearance of their competitors Transaero and near disappearance of UTAIR.
Now you have a near monopoly/cartel between just 2 carriers, S7 & AFL. (via Rossiya & their horrible lo-cost Pobeda).
It has ending up turning to a turf war over, hub and feeder networks, based at opposite ends of Moscow, fuelled by more speculation and politics.
If anyone has the unlucky experience of having to go from SVO to DME in the middle of winter, one can easily see the low priority accorded to service quality & customer interests in Russia.
The government strategy to try to strangle DME & create one giant government owned cartel with VKO, SVO, DME hasn't worked,-
So the next target has got to be a/c.
The first easy target would be SSJ100, which although it can fly full at 88 easy, & is cheap, has like most new jets had a troubled start.
AFL, never people to be particularly discrete, is mostly government owned.
SSJ is mostly government financed.
Anyone who has followed the catastrophic mess over
Baikonur v Vostochny will understand.
high media interest/bad news = politics again, = behind the scenes "turf wars" in Kremlin circles.
Of course, nobody is taking risks so TU204 is an a/c nobody wants, and nearly all those who bought went under.
All S7 could reply with is, A319 which carry minimum 125+, so fly half full and you're losing a lot of money.
They planned to downsize with Embraer, E170 E series in 2016 but it won't be flying for a while.
SSJ at under 100 in use (prod 2004), is a clear FAIL compared with Embraer 1000+ (prod 2002).
It really doesn't look good for the "revival" of the fortunes of the Russian aircraft industry.
Too much "krym nash", wasting time, and precious resources, flying people to places that are black holes for political reasons.
A good read,-
https://jamestown.org/programs/rd/
SSJ was supposed to be the flag bearer, but as most things in Russia these days, - the vodka, cheese, you name it, 50-75% of it like the news is fake.
The only thing you can pray for, nobody puts formol in your fish or methanol in your vodka.
TASS: Business & Economy - Inspection finds no critical faults in SSJ-100 planes