Under the federal law, foreign citizens may work as members of flight crews, including as captains, on civilian aircraft operated by Russian legal entities or individual entrepreneurs providing commercial air transport and aviation services.
The aim of the law is to remedy the shortage of civil aviation captains in a situation when civil aviation traffic is growing by 13–15 percent every year. The law sets a restriction: contracts hiring foreign citizens as captains in civil aviation can be signed within five years from the day the Federal Law enters into force.
Under the law, the Russian Government has the right to set the conditions for hiring foreign citizens as civil aviation captains, including the maximum number that can be hired.