High Anxiety : Flying in Russia Is Unpleasant and Often Risky

As a Boeing 737 was undergoing refueling a hundred yards from its waiting Moscow-bound passengers, the announcement came over the speaker on the popular Transaero airline that there would be a five-minute delay before boarding.

Some passengers shrugged. Others groaned. And at least half a dozen walked out onto the fuel-spattered Tarmac to light up cigarettes.

“Isn’t it dangerous to smoke on the air field when the plane is being refueled?” a Transaero flight attendant was asked by one astounded passenger.

“Well, in principle, it’s not desirable,” she responded. “But they look far enough away from the fuel containers to me.”

That passengers are left to smoke and stroll unattended around a working air field is neither peculiar to this airport serving St. Petersburg, nor is it disturbing to most Russians, long accustomed to lax safety practices in many areas.

But ignorance, neglect and willful violation of aviation safety standards have combined to make flying in Russia a perilous venture for business people, tourists and other travelers. It is a dramatic example of the chaos that accompanies this country’s effort to reinvent its economy.

In the one-step-forward, two-steps-back style of Russia’s economic transformation, improvements in service and comfort on a few airlines to a few destinations have been overshadowed by a sharp decline in safety throughout the travel network.

Ten times more passengers died in plane crashes in the former Soviet Union last year than in the United States per million flown; the fatalities were seven times higher than the worldwide average.

Russia’s inattention to security has also earned it the dubious distinction as the global headquarters for hijacking and airborne terrorism, being host to a third of all such incidents over the past five years.

Most of the 15,000 aircraft operating in the former Soviet Union are overdue for replacement but still fly because their owners have no money for new planes.

The best-trained pilots, navigators and maintenance engineers have been hired away by Western and new private carriers, leaving the dregs of the old Soviet system in the cockpits of the aging fleet assigned to government-run domestic airlines.

Air traffic controllers are poorly equipped and often uninformed about approved flight plans, and Russian airports are notoriously overcrowded and filthy.

Most disturbing of the many problems emerging as the airline industry escapes the Communist command system, officials say, is the steady growth in the incidence of safety violations that can lead to air disasters.

“Air catastrophes are sporadic and not as good an indicator of safety as the frequency of technical and security incidents,” said Anatoly G. Kruglov, director of safety and certification for the Interstate Aviation Committee. “The fatality rate has actually decreased this year. But if you look at the persistent increasing trend for incidents, you can see there is still great cause for concern.”

Aeroflot, the sole carrier in the Soviet era, had accident rates that were routinely two to three times higher than the international average. In the initial period of cooperation between Russian aviation officials and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in the late 1980s, Aeroflot casualty and incident frequencies dropped to near American levels. But beginning in 1992, fatalities soared to last year’s deadly record-breaker of 5.2 per million passengers flown. The comparable U.S. figure was 0.5 per million, and the global average was 0.8 per million.

As do all senior aviation officials, Kruglov blames the woeful state of air transport in Russia today on the poorly executed break-up of the Aeroflot monopoly in 1991.

Almost 500 private and government-run airlines have come into existence to take the place of the colossus that was the world’s largest aviation enterprise.

Some commercial airlines have introduced Western-style cabin service and comfortable interiors to replace the indifferent treatment still offered aboard most “babyflots,” the state-owned component airlines parceled out to republics and regions when Aeroflot was dismantled.

But aboard the noisy, malodorous Tupolev and Ilyushin craft of government-run airlines such as Moscow’s Domodedovo, there are no oxygen masks in the overhead compartments and no safety demonstrations before takeoff, and the only things to be found in a seat pocket are the shoulder blades of the passenger sitting just in front.

Aeroflot’s massive fleet was divided by transferring ownership of the planes, equipment and personnel to 220 local airports where they were based. A few were sold to private investors, but the majority of Aeroflot successors continue to operate as government monopolies with little prospect of drawing the investment needed to upgrade. Coinciding with the division of Aeroflot was the emergence of more than 200 private air companies.

“What we did wrong was to break the old system without having new legislation in place to build a new one,” says Valery N. Kasyanenko, deputy chief of the Russian Air Transportation Department.

Kasyanenko complained that the Russian government invests only 1 / 200th of the money spent on civil aviation in the United States. “The standards cannot even be compared,” he said, noting further problems with low pay for safety inspectors, aircraft mechanics and even pilots.

Officials from Russia’s larger airlines blame the proliferation of smaller carriers for the decline in safety. “I’m really afraid of these planes,” Vnukovo Airlines deputy financial director Alexander A. Khrenov said of the many ill-maintained aircraft in the skies over Russia. “Aviation is an expensive business. You need to invest a lot to make money in the long-term, but a lot of people have turned to this industry to make a fast buck.”

Government-owned airlines “often use their aircraft the way you would use a pen--you just write with it and not worry about whether it will work tomorrow,” Khrenov said.

The volume of domestic air passenger traffic has fallen to a third of its Soviet-era level, from 90 million in 1990 to 30 million last year, largely because the state no longer subsidizes tickets, the prices of which have increased far beyond what most Russians can afford.

“There are too many aviation companies competing for a shrinking market, which pushes them to economize on everything, including safety,” said Rudolf A. Teimurazov, chairman of the Flight Safety Commission that oversees air operations in 12 of the 15 former Soviet republics. “Over time, the excess will be forced out of business or their licenses will be revoked for safety violations. But at the moment, we have problems.”

He lamented the absence of a new aviation code. One has languished in the lower house of Parliament for nearly a year while deputies debate other issues. But he says the bigger problem is the widespread disregard of established safety practices rather than a lack of clearly defined rules.

One senior airline official confirmed that underpaid government inspectors often take bribes to overlook violations that could cause a carrier to lose its license. “Inspectors’ salaries are less than $100 per month,” the official said. “As is known, paupers cannot inspect the rich. They end up either bought off or threatened or simply exterminated.”

Successful new companies are also vulnerable to Russia’s ubiquitous protection rackets, the official said, forcing them to further cut corners to pay off the mobsters.

Although corruption takes its toll, air safety administrators say it is most often human carelessness that is at fault for crashes. Investigators attributed the crash last year of an Aeroflot Airbus A-310 in Siberia that killed all 75 aboard to the pilot’s having let his teen-age son take over the cockpit. Another major crash three months earlier of an Ilyushin aircraft of the Baikal Avia company, costing 120 lives, was also blamed on pilot error.

Airline officials are hesitant to express the opinion that Western-made planes are inherently safer--perhaps because no airline is completely free of Soviet-built aircraft. But most concede that the domestic fleet is in disrepair.

“All specialists know that safety is a complex of factors,” says Transaero President Alexander P. Pleshakov. “Of course, it begins with the equipment, and any new Boeing is better than any older aircraft.”

Transaero has mushroomed in four years from a single Ilyushin-86 and one Siberian destination to serve 20 cities in Russia and Europe with 10 Boeing jets and seven more on order. The airline was the first in Russia to offer business-class service or a frequent-flier program.

Although security deterioration still far outweighs service improvement, a Moscow-based Federal Aviation Administration representative said the transitional traumas were to be expected. After the U.S. government advised Americans against flying in Russia last year, the FAA joined in a safety partnership with Russia to review practices and make recommendations.

“To their credit, they did many of the things we asked them to, like increasing the inspection work force and getting the financing to keep them employed,” FAA representative Dennis Cooper said. “I’m not sure that with the magnitude of this transformation that any country would have done better. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t concerned about the safety levels.”

He cited the revocation of nearly 100 airline licenses over the past year as evidence that inspections are being conducted. He also said that air traffic control over Russia has improved.

Concerns about dilapidated radio equipment prompted a three-month suspension of Europe-to-Asia flyovers in Russian airspace last year. Transit flights were resumed last summer, after equipment was upgraded, but fresh incidents suggest much is still lost in communication.

A Virgin Atlantic Airways flight en route from London to Hong Kong in July was ordered to land at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo-2 Airport because air traffic controllers had not been apprised of its approved flight plan. The 271 passengers had no Russian visas and were forced to stay on board for eight hours while the matter was cleared up.

Such snafus will persist until the economy stabilizes and the Russian government can afford improvements, but aviation officials predict incremental advances in safety and organization over time.

The aging fleet will gradually be edged out by newer foreign-made craft, as Russian manufacturers have failed to develop leasing and long-term purchase options to compete with Western makers. Fly-by-night carriers will go bankrupt or lose their licenses, and international cooperation with the surviving companies will impart higher standards.

“We may see an improving trend in 1996 or 1997,” says Kruglov of the aviation committee. “But in the meantime, flying in Russia is dangerous.”

MOSCOW MISERY: Russian capital’s three international airports remain a picture of Soviet-era bureaucracy, D2

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Unfriendly Skies

Since the poorly executed breakup of the Aeroflot monopoly in 1991, the safety of Russian air transport has steadily declined. Ten times more passengers died in plane crashes in the former Soviet Union last year than in the United States per million people flown; the fatalities were seven times higher than the worldwide average.

Fatalities per million people, annual rate:

‘94: 5.2

Source: Interstate Aviation Committee