Russia suspends 737-500 flights after crash
Published 10:30 pm Thursday, September 25, 2008
MOSCOW — Russia’s aviation authority has suspended flights aboard Boeing 737-500s until their pilots receive additional training after a recent deadly crash, an official said Thursday.
All 88 people aboard a Boeing 737-500 died when the plane operated by the Russian Aeroflot-Nord crashed Sept. 14 while preparing to land in the city of Perm in the Ural Mountains area.
Federal Agency of Air Transport spokesman Sergei Samoshin said Thursday the agency has suspended flights by planes similar to the one that crashed until their pilots can undergo more training on simulators.
Samoshin said that Russian carriers now operate 107 Boeing 737s. He would not say how many of them would be affected or specify how long the suspension would last.
The RIA Novosti news agency said the measure referred to a subtype of Boeing 737-500 which is in service with six Russian carriers. It did not say how many planes would be affected.
The training is necessary to make sure all pilots properly read a key indicator showing the plane’s attitude, the so-called attitude indicator or artificial horizon, Samoshin said.
The attitude indicator is designed differently on Soviet-made planes and Western airliners.
Transport officials initially blamed the crash in Perm on a faulty engine that caught fire, but the investigating committee said it had found no sign of engine fire or other malfunction.
Investigators have yet to determine what caused the crash, Russia’s worst air disaster in two years. Aviation experts and observers said the crash was likely caused by pilot error.
Perm flight controller Irek Bikbov said in remarks broadcast by state-run Channel One television on the day of the crash that the plane’s pilot was behaving strangely, disobeying orders to descend on the final approach and instead taking the jet to a higher altitude. Bikbov said he then ordered the pilot to make a second run, but instead of making the right turn he turned left. When the controller asked the pilot if things were normal on board, the pilot answered positively.
Some experts say the pilot’s strange behavior could have been caused by his failure to properly read the attitude indicator’s reading, which could have led to a dangerous maneuver and then the crash. The pilot of the plane that crashed in Perm had flown Soviet-made planes before and had relatively little experience in piloting Boeings.
