just my two ruble worth..
The misunderstandings here are at a cultural level.
Most of you assume Russian pilots being by some degree inferior to western pilot. Yeah right. If you don't speak English with a Brisbane, Mid west or London accent you don't know anything about aviation. Well.. let's not forget that English is today the official aviation language just because a war was won. And this also by nuking and killing 650000 Japanese man, women and children ( plus another 2.4 million on the medium long term) with a bomb built by German and Italian scientist. Let's be honest, not really something you can go proud of and almost on par with the Holocaust the irrefutable inhumanity of which, a little bit too often, our Jewish friends get to remind us one way or the other.
In this case many forgot that Aeroflot was, before the fall of the Wall the open the gate to ruthless capitalism and the globalization that are eating a bit of your T&C for breakfast every morning while filling the pocket of your "managers" , by far the biggest airline in the world with 3500 destinations just in Russia. Saying that Aeroflot has no clue on dealing with winter ops is a paradox. They are probably the most expert in this field.
The magic word is "adhering" . the definition of which is " to stick fast by or as if by suction or glue"
Dry uncompacted powdered snow is definitely not "adhering" to the surface of the wing. The crew most probably checked visually for the absence of ice underneath and decided that de-icing was to to do more arm than good seen the temperature and wx conditions. 100% legal.The snow blew away during the take off roll as the de-icing fluid would have done. Period.
If you still have any doubts on Russian competence just compare the number of failure and disaster the US had on their space programs when compared to USSR and consider the flawless regularity with which the Soyuz still today goes back and forth from Star City to the ISS and back at a fracytion of the cost of the Shuttle. Beside that I don't know how many of you know that the engine of the US Atlas 5 rocket main stage are the Russian-built RD-180. So please, nothing personal here, but Britons arrogance sometimes gets really annoying. Send the video to the Queen.. if you like. Dasvidaniya.
Last edited by Jetaim; 24th Apr 2012 at 13:16.