The Saratov Airlines accident in Russia that killed all 71 aboard Sunday after takeoff from Moscow reminded me of my investigative reporting there in the 1990s.
I was on assignment to determine the safety of Russian airlines for Condé Nast Traveler magazine, and my interpreter, Boris Zagoruiko, a Moscow resident who had also interpreted for CNN, told me about a disturbing event he had witnessed years before. He said he was at a Moscow airport watching the inaugural flight of a new Russian-built aircraft. The plane crashed immediately after takeoff, killing all the passengers, he said, but the next day's newspaper proclaimed a successful flight with no mention of the tragedy.
Zagoruiko and I flew on a wide-body Ilyushin Il-86 jet operated by Aeroflot from Moscow’s Vnukovo airport to Mineralnye Vody airport in southern Russia. As we sped down the runway during takeoff, I noticed that some passengers didn’t have their seat belts buckled, and the plane rumbled so violently that an overhead luggage bin opened. After we reached cruise altitude, I walked to the rear of the cabin and saw passengers smoking outside the lavatories on our no-smoking flight. I asked a flight attendant whether movies were shown, and she replied, “Not anymore — someone stole the projector.”
There was no compartment for an oxygen mask above each seat, so I raised my concern with a flight attendant. She walked to the front of the plane, returned carrying a tangled mass of oxygen masks and said 47 masks were available. I asked her why just 47 when more than 300 passengers were on our flight, and she said Russia was a military country, with many landing strips that our flight could immediately descend to before oxygen was needed.
As we prepared to land, the landing gear released with a bang. Our landing was rough, bouncing me in my seat and causing metal hangers to clang loudly in a nearby closet. Passengers ignored the pilot’s warning to stay seated and lined up in the aisle as we taxied. The aircraft suddenly stopped short, and passengers in the aisle fell. The cabin lights went out, and we sat in darkness until we deplaned.
Zagoruiko and I spent two days with Vasily Babaskin, the president of the local Aeroflot company in Mineralnye Vody, and were treated like royalty. Babaskin escorted us to our return flight to Moscow, and then, after takeoff, extraordinary events on the ground unfolded. Hijackers carrying submachine guns and grenades commandeered a bus and took 18 hostages with them to Mineralye Vody airport, where they demanded a flight to Iraq, Turkey or Jordan. Scant accounts later appeared in U.S. newspapers, but it was reported that the hijackers, after 25 hours, surrendered and released their hostages.
While Zagoruiko and I were in-flight, another Aeroflot passenger jet — flying much further south of Mineralnye Vody over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region — was hit by an Azerbaijani heat-seeking missile. The plane made an emergency landing, and only minor injuries were suffered by some passengers.
Since those days in the 1990s, Russia’s airline industry has gone through many changes, and lots of new airlines have taken to the skies.
The best-known airline, Aeroflot, continues to operate, but it is quite a different carrier today. The airline, which once flew only Russian-manufactured planes, now has many Airbus and Boeing planes and proclaims its fleet is “one of the youngest in the world.” The average age of its aircraft is 4.1 years, the airline says.
The Independent newspaper in the United Kingdom says aviation safety is “improving” in Russia, “with Aeroflot and S7 Airlines achieving global standards.” The two airlines’ marketing alliances with other carriers, SkyTeam and Oneworld, demand such standards, The Independent says.
Two years ago, The Telegraph, another United Kingdom newspaper, called Aeroflot one of the world’s safest airlines. The newspaper said “Aeroflot’s safety record was once the stuff of nervous fliers’ nightmares,” but the airline was involved in only one fatal accident in the 20 years prior to 2016.
Unlike Aeroflot, Saratov Airlines is a regional, relatively unknown airline. The Saratov plane that crashed Sunday after taking off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport was a Russian-built Antonov AN-148, a small Russian-built jet manufactured in 2010. It was bound for Orsk, a city about 1,000 miles away from Moscow. The plane took off in limited visibility and light snow and crashed into a field with deep snow.
Antonov, the jet’s manufacturer, says the AN-148 seats 65 to 85 passengers and meets “all the modern world requirements, safety and ecological standards.” The AN-148 “can be safely operated” on runways that are poorly equipped, made of pebbles, unpaved or covered with ice or snow, Antonov says.
Saratov has temporarily suspended flights by the remaining five AN-148 jets in its fleet, according to FlightGlobal, a company that provides aviation data, analytics and intelligence.
The airline says the jet that crashed passed a maintenance check in January, including a careful inspection of its wings, engines and airframe structures, FlightGlobal reports.
Saratov says, according to FlightGlobal, that a routine check before Sunday’s departure from Moscow revealed no issues or concerns, and the aircraft had completed other flights earlier that day.
A new flight crew, including a captain who had logged 2,147 hours in AN-148 cockpits, took control of the plane before it left the Moscow airport, FlightGlobal reports.
Saratov had no prior passenger flight accidents, but a training flight with an AN-148 crashed in 2011 after the flight crew exceeded the aircraft’s maximum speed, according to The New York Times.
Saratov is not listed in the ratings of airlineratings.com, which rates airlines based on various safety criteria. Airlines with the best safety rating are given seven stars.
Of the 10 Russian airlines rated by airlineratings.com, Pobeda Airlines, a low-cost airline that’s a subsidiary of Aeroflot, is the only carrier with seven stars. Aeroflot and seven other airlines have six stars, and two airlines, Nordavia and UTair, have five stars.
