Flying safer in Russia than USA
From the "Irish Times"
"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.
Russia's passenger aircraft may be ageing and its airlines in dire straits financially but official international statistics suggest travelling by plane is actually safer in Russia than in the US.
But Russian and Western aviation experts agree that the risks involved in flying in Russia have decreased in recent years.
French experts based in Moscow said International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAA) figures show Russia's safety record is now better than that of the US and than the world average of countries monitored by the ICAA.
However, the experts warned Russia's aviation sector needed extensive modernisation and investment to avoid a rapid return to the black years of 1994-1996, 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 aircrafts leading to the creation of around 300 separate companies. Most are tiny and financially shaky.
One of the major problems, the experts said, is that many airlines own too many planes. In total there are some 8,000 aeroplanes and helicopters, only 46 of them Western-built, of which too many are old. Ground infrastructures also suffer for lack of investment.
Despite these handicaps, the experts said safety standards in Russia had been maintained and even improved in recent years - partly because passenger numbers and therefore the number of flights have dropped 76 per cent since 1990, partly because airlines have improved safety measures