WkndWanderer wrote:Even without sanctions, unless they're paying cash, I can't imagine any western institutions extending finance or lease terms to Russian carriers for a long time. The risk is too great when your country has a proven track record of just seizing assets and sticking the owners or lienholders with losses.
Not quite and, with respect, you are falling into the trap of "I can't imagine....." as being a definitive reality. There is no 'track record'. It has happened once, and in direct response to western sanctions and virtually any country would have done the same in the circumstances. Whether that is right or wrong is irrelevant, and a different matter entirely. The same morality could equally be said of unilateral sanctions themselves (is freezing assets/funds by sanctions not a similar thing, just from a different side?). Lessors and lienholders take financial risks with every transaction and are/should be well aware of developments. Indeed, the war did not start overnight....it was clearly brewing for many months, so why did these Lessors etc not have the foresight to pull their assets out? The answer is simple. They were too busy making money from them while they could. But, all that notwithstanding, those aircraft are very valuable assets so are you suggesting those lessors and lienholders just walk away and not realise they can extend those leases to recoup and make even more money. One important thing you are not recognising though, and that is lessors would be leasing to airlines, not the Russian govt......and, by Putin's decree, those airlines have actually a valid legal argument that it prevented them returning the aircraft. At the end of the day, when it suits, morality is noticeably absent from either politics, or economics