Lebedev sells Red Wings for symbolic price of 1 Rouble

Red Wings  has been sold by its Russian oligarch owner, Alexander Lebedev, for the symbolic sum of 1 rouble ($0.03). Lebedev confirmed via Twitter that he had indeed offloaded his interest in the carrier to an unnamed group of investors, "because of the fears of the bureaucrats in charge (of the sector)." Rosaviatsiya, the Russian civil aviation agency, grounded Red Wings in early February after preliminary findings by an investigation into the crash of a Red Wings Tu-204-100 (RA-64047 / MSN 64047) at Moscow Vnukovo International (VKO) on December 29 which killed 5 crew, pointed to "defective brakes or a misfiring reverse engine" caused by "numerous violations likely brought about through a lack of adequate financing." Lebedev protested in February that there were no grounds for the decision to stop flights by the airline, which previously served several Russian cities with scheduled flights and international destinations on charter flights using a fleet of eight Tu-204-100s

CH-Aviation