Volume I, No. XVIII
Commerce renews its Aeroflot, Azur Air and UTair denial orders, a tool now aimed at the foreign firms that service them
The Bureau of Industry and Security has renewed for another year the temporary denial orders first imposed on three Russian airlines in April 2022. The new evidence tables show Boeing jets still flying to Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Uzbekistan and the Maldives this summer.
The orders say plainly whom they are written for. Renewing the denial order against PJSC Aeroflot for a year, the Commerce Department’s export enforcement chief found it necessary “to give notice to companies and individuals in the United States and abroad that they should avoid dealing with Aeroflot”1. Identical findings accompany the orders against Azur Air and UTair Aviation, all three signed on September 11 by David A. Peters, Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement, and published in the Federal Register on September 171,2,3. This is the sixth renewal since the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) first cut the three carriers off in April 20221,2,3. The airlines have kept flying throughout, and the policy interest lies less in the carriers, which on BIS’s evidence have not complied, than in the ground handlers, fuel suppliers and repair shops in third countries where their Boeing jets still land.
The instrument: a temporary order that has become semi-permanent
The statutory authority is the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA), whose enforcement section empowers Commerce to “issue temporary denial orders with respect to items” subject to its controls6. The procedure sits in section 766.24 of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). BIS may deny a party’s export privileges, ex parte and effective on issuance, on a showing that the order is necessary in the public interest to prevent an “imminent violation”1. The regulation defines imminence loosely: a violation “may be ‘imminent’ either in time or degree of likelihood,” and BIS can rely on the general circumstances of an investigation rather than proof that a breach is about to happen1.
The original design was a 180-day measure, renewable in 180-day increments1. In August 2023, BIS added a second track. Where a respondent “has engaged in a pattern of repeated, ongoing and/or continuous apparent violations,” BIS may now request renewal for up to one year4. The rule said the stricter showing should include specific facts about past apparent violations, and it named Russian and Belarusian airlines, beginning with Aeroflot, as the cases it had in mind4. Each of the 2026 orders makes the pattern finding and runs for one year1,2,3.
The order’s limits are procedural. It rests on findings the respondent has not contested. Each airline may appeal at any time to an administrative law judge at the U.S. Coast Guard’s docketing center in Baltimore, and may oppose a renewal in writing1,2,3. None has. Investigators requested this renewal on August 3, and because international mail service to Russia is suspended, they tried to serve the airlines “by alternative means”; no opposition was received1,2,3.
The mechanism: what the orders prohibit, and for whom
The controls underneath the orders date from the first weeks of the war. From February 24, 2022, any aircraft or aircraft part in Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) 9A991 needed a license for export, reexport or in-country transfer to Russia, reviewed under a policy of denial1. From March 2, 2022, aircraft registered in, owned or controlled by, or chartered or leased by Russia or a Russian national lost eligibility for license exception AVS, so any U.S.-origin aircraft, or foreign aircraft with more than 25 percent controlled U.S. content, needs a license before flying to Russia1. Flights within Russia, BIS has argued since 2022, may also breach section 736.2(b)(10), the general prohibition on dealing in items exported in violation of the rules1,4.
The denial order adds two layers. The first binds the airline, which may not take part in any transaction involving items subject to the EAR1. The second binds everyone else. No person may export or transfer such items to the airline, facilitate its acquisition of them, buy from it, or “service any item” it owns or controls where the service uses an item subject to the EAR; servicing is defined as installation, maintenance, repair, modification or testing1. A third paragraph allows BIS, after notice and comment, to extend the order to related persons1. The single exception covers transactions directly related to safety of flight that BIS authorizes under section 764.3(a)(2)1.
Which flights does BIS cite in 2026?
The evidence tables are the new material. For Aeroflot, BIS lists 20 flights between June 9 and July 16, 2026, by one 737-800 and three 777-300ERs, including routes from Moscow to Male in the Maldives, Bangkok and Phuket to Moscow and Vladivostok, and a 737 rotation through Antalya, Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada1. Azur Air’s table covers four Boeing 757-200s on 20 flights from March 9 to July 17, mostly to and from Antalya, Bodrum and Dalaman in Turkey, Phuket and Rayong in Thailand, and Nha Trang and Phu Quoc in Vietnam2. UTair’s covers four 737-800s on 21 flights from July 5 to August 16, reaching Samarkand, Bukhara and Fergana in Uzbekistan, Yerevan, Baku, Dushanbe and Antalya3. Several aircraft are the same airframes cited in earlier rounds: Aeroflot’s 777 with serial number 41690 appears in flight records from March 2022 onward1.
The effect: compliance risk shifts to third-country airports
For the airlines, the cost is cumulative rather than new. When the first orders were issued, ch-aviation reported that the U.S. government expected them eventually to force the carriers to ground most of their flights by stopping foreign companies from providing maintenance, refuelling and other services7. Four years on, the tables show that the fleets the orders target are still in service1,2,3.
Evidence of how that has been sustained comes from outside the orders. Finnish broadcaster Yle, analyzing Russian customs data, estimated that Russia imported at least 1 billion euros of aircraft parts from 2022, about 600 million euros of Airbus parts and 400 million euros of Boeing components between February 2022 and September 2024, routed largely through companies in the United Arab Emirates, Gabon, China and Turkey, according to The Moscow Times8. The same report said UTair received roughly a quarter of the parts identified8. Boeing and Airbus said they comply with all sanctions and that there is no legal way to export aircraft, parts or services to Russia, the paper reported8.
The Russian government frames the issue differently. Industry and Trade Minister Anton Alikhanov said about $500 million of aircraft parts bought by Russia were frozen in the United States, that Moscow would seek their release in future peace negotiations, and that it would press the manufacturers to recognize repairs carried out by Russian firms, according to The Moscow Times8.
For compliance officers outside Russia, the practical exposure is the destination list. The airports named in the 2026 tables, in Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and the Maldives, are places where ground-handling and line-maintenance work on these aircraft may involve U.S.-origin parts or tooling1,2,3. The prohibitions apply to any person, wherever located, not only to U.S. firms1.
The longer view: Mahan Airways and the renewable emergency
The template is older than the war. On March 17, 2008, BIS imposed a temporary denial order on Iran’s Mahan Airways, renewed repeatedly since; the 2023 rule cited that order alongside Aeroflot’s as “emblematic” of the conduct the one-year option was meant to address4. The rule also noted that, according to the most recent Mahan renewal, Aeroflot had begun sending aircraft to Mahan for repairs or maintenance4. Two carriers under parallel denial orders, servicing each other, is the outcome that these orders cannot prevent by themselves.
What the Russian airline orders have become, in effect, is a standing designation maintained by annual paperwork. The first Aeroflot order rested on flights after March 2, 2022 to Moscow from Beijing, Delhi, Antalya, Istanbul and Dubai5; the 2026 renewal lists twenty flights, and the imminence standard quoted in both orders reads word for word the same1,5. The order invites the next step itself: BIS may seek a further renewal by written request no later than 20 days before the order expires, and any opposition from the airline must arrive at least seven days before then1. None of the three airlines opposed this year’s renewal1,2,3. Whether a temporary order can be renewed indefinitely on a standard written for imminent violations is a question the record so far has left to the agency alone.