We recently published an article on how world famous MiGFlug company had to cancel all jet rides in Russia due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
‘It is coming to an end due to this tragic and unnecessary war,’ MiGFlug said on its Facebook page. ‘Any profits generated from flights in Russia in the last two years will be used to support Ukraine. We are currently looking for the most effective way to help. If you have a suggestion, please share it in the comments!’
The previous post also featured a brief summary about how these jet flights became available, and the political and historical background of it.
With this new article we will try to predict the future of flights in fighter jets.
Fighter jet flights like those sold by MiGFlug (CLICK HERE for overview of fighter jet flights currently available) will very likely become harder and more expensive to organize in the future. Why is that?
Obvious reasons of why costs have been increasing again and again since fighter jet flights became available for civilians are factors like rising fuel prices. Luckily, MiGFlug has been able to keep US and European fighter jet flight prices flat. Actually, since MiGFlug always believed that prices we saw in 2008 were not sustainable, the company decided not to increase prices.
Before canceling all jet rides in Russia because of the war in Ukraine, an exception was the MiG-29 with clearly higher prices. MiGFlug couldn’t do anything against the Russian policy.
Costs for maintenance were rising too, mainly due to the increased scarcity of spare parts. Moreover, because there are less and less spare parts on the market and because engines need to be replaced from time to time, costs for maintenance will continue to rise in the foreseeable future.
The Swiss Hawker Hunter for instance needs custom-tailored wheels as they are not produced anymore. Also, the know how to maintain these jets and keep them airworthy will fade. This is not an immediate problem, and many operators have fantastic crews with young mechanics who get a very good training.
Things got even worse after the Russian invasion of Ukraine: not only prices for fuel and spare parts soared but the manufacturing production and maintenance activity Motor Sich (L-39’s engine manufacturer) is now highly compromised because it is located in the highly combated Eastern Ukraine town of Zaporizhzhia.
There is another threat: the regulatory constraints for the aviation in general and those for civilian fighter jet flights in particular.
MiGFlug has been able to keep US and European fighter jet flight prices flat until 2020, despite constantly rising costs. But since then, the company had to increase prices twice, in 2021 and now again in 2022.
To sum up the above: the future doesn’t look bright for fighter jet flights, at least in the long run. But the positive development is that we could have an improvement before it gets worse: it could be possible that we’ll have MiG-21 supersonic flights available anytime soon. MiGFlug participates in not fewer than 3 projects.
Photo credit: MiGFlug
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