Russian flight safety takes nosedive

Anatoly Knyshov, a highly decorated test pilot with 41 years' experience, said: "Business managers run for profits and neglect safety."

Some airlines allegedly penalize the crews for failing to land on the first attempt — a practice that may have led to Russia's latest deadly crash, in March, of a Tupolev-134 whose pilot hit the ground trying to land in fog even though he couldn't see the tarmac lights. Six were killed and 20 injured.

Russia's civil aviation is overseen by five government agencies, two of which both regulate the industry and investigate accidents, so that blame is invariably pinned on the crew rather than regulatory failures.

"In the end, no one is responsible for anything," said test pilot Knyshov, who recently wrote to President Vladimir Putin urging action to save Russian aviation from ruin.

After the 1991 Soviet collapse, 500 "babyflots" — offshoots of the Aeroflot monopoly — sprang up. Today there are 182, and the smaller ones are more likely to sacrifice safety to cut costs, critics say.

Low pay is also a safety issue, said Miroslav Boichuk, chief of the Cockpit Personnel Association of Russia. Despite increases in recent years, average pilots' salaries of around $2,000 a month are far lower than in the West, and typically depend on how much time they spend flying — a practice, Boichuk said, that can exhaust them and impair their judgment.

Standards at state-run flight schools have declined steeply since the Soviet era. Rookie pilots such as Khodnevich — who was at the controls of flight 612 when it crashed — log about 60 flight hours during training, mostly in old propeller planes. That's less than half the minimum of 150 hours in modern planes required by Western flight schools.

Only 20 percent of training planes are airworthy and instructors earn less than a tenth of what a commercial pilot earns in Russia.

Student pilots, meanwhile, may be distracted from their studies by hunger. The daily food subsidy at government flight schools is $1.90. "Even a police dog gets more," said Smirnov, the former deputy minister.

Critics say Russian pilots aren't being properly trained on the secondhand Boeings and Airbuses in increasing use here.

Last year an Airbus A310 skidded off a runway in the Siberian city of Irkutsk and slammed into a row of garages, killing 125 people. The pilot had instinctively worked the controls as if he were flying a Soviet-designed plane, and accelerated instead of slowing down.

One more issue, say critics, is a legal system that doesn't expose airlines to expensive lawsuits.

"Forcing at least one carrier to pay sizable compensation would have a sobering impact on others," said Vitaly Yusko, whose 10-year old daughter, a sister and her two sons died in the crash. "That would help end their feeling of total impunity."

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