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Foreigner
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05.07.2001 10:01:39
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Re: Russian planes safer than world, US norm despite bad reputation
Russian planes safer than world, US norm despite bad reputation
Foreign Affairs Front Page News
Source: AFP
Published: July 4
Posted on 07/04/2001 08:11:36 PDT by oxi-nato
MOSCOW, July 4 (AFP) - Russia's passenger aircraft may be ageing and its airlines in dire straits financially but international statistics suggest travelling by plane is actually safer in Russia than in the United States. The crash in Siberia of a Soviet-era TU-154 plane that killed 145 people on Tuesday night -- Russia's worst air disaster in decades -- again focuses attention on the safety record of the country's aviation industry.
But Russian and Western aviation experts agree that the risks involved in flying in Russia have decreased in recent years. French experts said that figures show Russia's safety record is now better than that of the United States and than the world average of countries monitored by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
However, the experts warned Russia's aviation sector needed extensive modernisation and investment to avoid a rapid return to the black years of 1994-96, when a series of accidents led some Western companies to advise their employees against flying on Russian aircraft. After the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, mammoth state monopoly Aeroflot was pruned back, with the sell-off of its planes leading to the creation of around 300 separate companies.
Most are tiny and financially shaky. "The 10 biggest of these (airlines) hold 90 percent of the (domestic) market and most of the others are too small to achieve viability," one of the French aviation experts told AFP. Sector leader Aeroflot still largely dominates Russia's international connections, with a 15 percent market share. The other Russian carriers together hold 32 percent of the market, while foreign airlines control the remaining 53 percent. Aeroflot is also the largest domestic carrier, running 10 percent of all internal flights. Its nearest rivals -- Pulkovo and Vnukovo Airlines -- each control six percent of the domestic market.
One of the major problems, the experts said, is that many airlines own too many planes. In total there are some 8,000 airplanes and helicopters, only 46 of them Western-built, of which too many are old. Ground infrastructures also suffer for lack of investment. "The average age of international air fleets is 8.7 years, that of Aeroflot's planes is 10.3, but the majority of planes used by Russian airlines are more than 18 years old," said Yulia Zhdanova, an analyst with Moscow-based investment bank United Financial Group. As a result, maintenance costs are high at a time when many companies are struggling financially.
Despite these handicaps, the experts said safety standards in Russia had been maintained and even improved in recent years -- partly because passenger numbers have dropped 76 percent since 1990, reducing the number of flights, and partly because the airlines have cleaned up their act. In 1997, 1998 and 1999, the number of plane crashes per 100,000 flight-hours was so low in Russia that it was assimilated to zero, one French specialist said. Over the same three years, the number of US plane crashes were 0.021, 0.006 and 0.012 respectively per 100,000 flight-hours, while the world average was 0.080, 0.060 and 0.050 respectively, he added.
Aeroflot's record of crashes was even better than the national average, Zhdanova noted in a recent study. Ivan Popov, a pilot with a small regional carrier, told AFP there had been "considerable pressure on the airlines to impose safety norms". For example, in the early 1990s, aircrews often allowed extra standing passengers on board in exchange for a dollar bribe and some crashes were attributed to the excess weight carried by the aircraft.
And in one notorious case in 1994, a pilot allowed his young son to sit at the flight controls. The boy accidentally switched off the automatic pilot, causing the Aeroflot travelling from Moscow to Hong Kong to nosedive into the ground, killing 75 people. Stricter discipline has eliminated cases of this kind and maintenance schedules are now punctually observed. However, the specialists said helicopter transport remained a black spot, with a far higher average of crashes than planes.
Meanwhile, the myriad small airlines needed to regroup around the sector leaders in order to acquire the means to improve their poor safety and quality image, they added. "That will take time, and they will have to buy new planes if the perceptions of the travelling public is to change," Zhdanova said.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b43322833b3.htm
>С уважением, Рубен http://www.geocities.com/urrib2000/