MOSCOW -- The crash of a Russian A321 in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, which left no survivors, is now the deadliest aviation disaster in Russian history.
Yet Russian commercial aviation has had a disturbing track record for years now. In fact, according to the most recent IATA report, flying a commercial airline in Russia is four times more dangerous than the world average.
Recent high-profile commercial air disasters include the 2011 Yak-Service disaster, which wiped out nearly the entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team, the 2013 Tatarstan Airlines crash, which killed, among others, the son of Tatarstan president Rustam Minnikhanov, and the Vnukovo Airport ground collision, which killed, besides three others, Christophe de Margerie, CEO of Total oil company and a tireless champion of Russian business abroad.
Russia’s bad aviation safety record is the result of various overlapping factors – with the problem largely confined to smaller carriers. Aeroflot, Russia’s flagship airline, has a good reputation by contrast, and the recently bankrupted Transaero, another major airline, likewise had a good safety record.
Outdated legislation that muddles issues of accountability, corruption, and a general lack of safety culture are routinely cited by experts as some of the major factors behind the poor performance of smaller Russian airlines.
A glaring problem that is often overlooked is pilot certification and pilot training. In the course of the Yaroslavl investigation for example, it was determined that the pilots had falsified their paperwork and one of them, furthermore, had a banned substance in his system.
Although the Tatarstan investigation has yet to be concluded (results are expected later this year), preliminary reports indicate that the pilots onboard did not have sufficient experience to perform a go-around after the plane aborted an approach to Kazan International Airport.
Plenty of speculation has already occurred in the Russian media as to the cause of the Egypt crash. Opinions from both seasoned aviation experts and former passengers of Kogalymavia, the airline that operated the doomed flight, have poured in. They include a terrifying account from Russian blogger and seasoned traveler Olga Fink, who flew Kogalymavia to Egypt in 2013 recalled “frankly inebriated flight attendants”, “four attempts at a landing” and “a rickety cabin where everything was broken.”
“Kogalymavia should have been shut down long ago,” Fink wrote.
A timeline of all incidents involving Kogalymavia has been compiled by a pro-government news outlet Ruposters – it goes back as far as 2010. Three Kogalymavia passengers were killed in 2011, when an airplane caught fire on the tarmac in the Russian city of Surgut.
Decorated Russian ex-pilot Yury Sytnik meanwhile told Russia’s Business FM that based on all the flight data information we have so far, technical problems with the plane seem to be a likely culprit.
In the same Business FM report, a former Kogalymavia employee who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the specific plane involved in the crash had been damaged before and that “it was had many problems. There were many technical failures before.”
A typical pattern for Russian air crashes involves a massive amount of outrage and the closure of the operating airline. Yet it remains to be seen whether this particularly devastating loss of life that just occurred over Egypt will force the government and the public to address systemic issues plaguing domestic carriers.
In the meantime, the bankruptcy of Transaero may force more Russian passengers to take to the skies via airlines with questionable safety records.