Ruins of a Russian jet crash which killed 170, Aug. 22, 2006
Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo! News
On Tuesday morning (August 22) it was reported by the Associated Press and Reuters that a Russian passenger jet, a Pulkova Airlines TU-154 airliner bound from the Black Sea resort of Anapa to St. Petersburg, crashed in Ukraine with 171 people on board.
This comes after a July crash in the Russian city of Irkutsk of a Russian A-310, operated by the Russian carrier S7, killing 124 passengers and crew, and it is the third crash the region this year. In May, an A-320 of the Armenian airline Armavia crashed into the Black Sea while trying to land in the Russian resort city of Sochi in rough weather, killing all 113 people aboard.
There was also a shocking series of three emergency landings related to engine failures on July 10th. A TU-134 overran a runway at a naval base in the Crimea after an engine malfunction at takeoff, an Airbus A-310 als operated by S7, made an emergency landing at another airfield in Ukraine after experiencing engine trouble, and a Tu-154 operated by Urals Airlines on a flight from the Russian Far East to Yekaterinburg landed in Irkutsk after one of its engines broke down. How many other similar incidents have failed to make the Western or Russian press is frightening to imagine.
So it appears that as many as 400 or more travelers have been killed in plane crashes in Russia this year, which still has several months left to go. Ironcially, the major policy announcement involving airplanes from the Kremlin has been not about increasing safety but about the Kremlin’s intention to shoot down planes taken hostage by terrorist hijackers.
Yet, it appears that Russia’s poor quality service is far more dangerous to passengers than any terrorist. The Kremlin has also announced that it intends to launch a multi-million-dollar PR offensive to comat Russia’s negative image as a tourist destination, a classically Neo-Soviet gesture. Rather than undertake genuine reform of Russia’s tourist market to remove what foreigners find objectionable, Neo-Soviet Russia prefers a propaganda campaign seeking to whitewash the defects. But no amout of public relations will induce foreign tourists to take their lives in their hands boarding Russian jets, and one must wonder whether the Kremlin is even genuine about wanting to change Russia’s image, which is perfectly consistent with Russia’s general attitude of xenophobia. Perhaps the PR offensive is more aimed at a Russian audience, as such things often were in Soviet times.
Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.