Head of MAK is Tatiana Anodina, mother of Transaero founder, Alexander Pleshakov. Speculation about this obvious conflict of interest has been going on for years, also given that Anodina held shares at Transaero (by the way, she conveniently sold them in August, just before imminent bankruptcy news broke out publicly on 01/09) and was a member of the board of directors. Transaero seemed to enjoy priority treatment back in the days when Evgeny Primakov (career politician, held prime minister seat in 90's) was around (exemption on VAT for importing foreign aircrafts for example) as many speculated about love affair between him and Anodina. MAK was founded in early 90's by Anodina (i.e. private person) and it is a highly controversial story as it enjoys powers of the sole air accidents investigation body and aircraft type certifications in CIS countries, by law no other body can question MAK's investigation conclusions.
Anyway, this latest development over B737 certificate suspension by MAK clearly something that would be unheard of when Transaero was still operating (all aircrafts grounded on the 26'th of October after Russian CAA annulled Transaero AOC) as it was the biggest operator of B737 in Russia and MAK's decisions never adversely affected Transaero commercially unlike it's competitors (one of the examples being when a few years ago MAK refused to issue certificate for Aeroflot's B777 while it was never a problem for Transaero).
The general feeling in Russian aviation community is that this is joke and 'revenge' for Transaero's grounding by CAA more than anything else (other major operators of B737 in Russia is S7 airlines (they refused to bail out Transaero even though they had a last minute formal agreement) and Aeroflot group with subsidiaries (Transaero blaims Aeroflot for controlled bankruptcy after government by force instated Aeroflot's man as new CEO in September, which eventually led to sales termination and AOC being annulled).
More news to follow on Friday after CAA briefing.
Last edited by GSLOC; 5th Nov 2015 at 18:21.