Il-96 Jets Barred From Flying
By Lyuba Pronina
Staff Writer
Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP
The grounding comes only weeks after Putin's Il-96 had technical problems.
Aeroflot scrambled to adjust its flight schedule on Monday after the Transportation Ministry indefinitely grounded the country's Ilyushin 96-300 planes for safety reasons.
The unprecedented grounding comes only weeks after President Vladimir Putin, on a visit to Finland earlier this month, had to return to Russia aboard a backup Il-62 because of a technical malfunction in his Il-96.
Aeroflot, whose six Il-96s account for 40 percent of its long-haul fleet, canceled all flights to Hanoi and a number of flights to Beijing, Seoul, Toronto and Washington. The airline said it could lose up to $30 million if the flight ban lasted until the end of the year.
The grounding has also created difficulties for KrasAir and Domodedovo Airlines, which operate two and three Il-96s, respectively.
"We are suffering colossal losses," said Olga Trapeznikova, a KrasAir spokeswoman. "This happened in the peak season and has seriously affected our charter program."
There have been 19 incidents with Il-96-300 planes since 1993, Interfax reported Monday, citing Boris Alyoshin, head of the Federal Industry Agency.
The poor man's version of the Boeing 767, the wide-body Il-96 took to the skies in 1993 -- the last big achievement of Soviet civil aviation. The plane seats 300 passengers and has a range of 11,000 kilometers.
Over the weekend, the Federal Transportation Inspection Service forwarded a proposal to ground the Il-96 to Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko and a number of airlines, the Transportation Ministry said in a statement Monday.
The grounding -- which also affects the two presidential Il-96s operated by Rossia airline -- comes on the heels of a number of incidents earlier this month that affected flight safety, the ministry said, without going into any more detail.
An investigation has identified a defective component in the airplane's braking system as the reason for the malfunctions. The ministry determined that the part had been produced in violation of design requirements and that certificates on its production had been falsified.
The incident with Putin's aircraft sparked the decision to ground the plane, said a source in the transportation inspection service.
"If it had happened to some other aircraft, there would have been the required investigation but not so much noise," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
"Unfortunately, something first needs to happen to a presidential jet for our authorities to take action," said Lev Koshlyakov, Aeroflot's deputy general director.
"We have tomes of correspondence with the manufacturers asking them to make [technical] adjustments. But they either ignore us completely or ask for a lot of money."
Koshlyakov said Aeroflot was busy redrafting its flight schedule and using its own Il-86s, Airbus 320s and Boeing 767s to fill in the gaps.
Koshlyakov said the airline's total losses could amount to $30 million if the grounding lasted until the end of the year.
He also did not rule out that a contract to lease six more Il-96s would now be delayed. Aeroflot's board was set to approve the deal at an extraordinary shareholder meeting scheduled for Sept. 18.
"The grounding would give Aeroflot enough reason to postpone the deal," said Boris Rybak, head of Infomost aviation consultancy.
The delivery schedule of two Il-96s ordered last year by Cubana may also be affected. The Cuban state carrier gave a commitment to Ilyushin Finance Co. for two more Il-96s only last week, at the Seventh Moscow Aviation and Space Show, MAKS 2005.
"This technical malfunction will be fixed quickly and should not affect either of the [Cubana] contracts," said Andrei Lipovetsky, spokesman for Ilyushin Finance, which leases out the plane.
Vyacheslav Salikov, director of VASO, the Ilyushin production plant in Voronezh, said that he welcomed the move by the transportation authorities.
"The Transportation Ministry made the right decision. It is time for the industry to overhaul itself for the sake of future contracts and [for the sake of] post-sale support, beginning with the suppliers of materials and components," he said, speaking by telephone from Voronezh.
"We clinched a few deals at MAKS, and I would like to get guarantees and the requisite documentation on all components so that we don't get the effect of moonshine vodka on our plane."
Salikov did not explain how faulty components ended up in the assembly of the planes. Salikov blamed the splintering of the domestic aviation industry, which led to a lack of accountability and professionalism. The Voronezh plant that makes the Il-96 has 1,200 different suppliers, he said.
In recent years, prosecutors and civil aviation authorities have opened a number of investigations into the use of bootleg components in domestic aircraft, Infomost's Rybak said.
Oh wait were gonna have the A380....do you want upstairs or downstairs.
