Air crash can be avoided
This requires a unified warning and prevention system. aviation of incidents
The increase in the number of air crashes, the increase in the number of fatalities and injuries as a result of accidents suggests that the current legislation and the security management system for transport are imperfect, sometimes contradictory, which does not contribute to the systematic solution of these issues. But there have been no cardinal decisions yet.
Unfortunately, we have to admit that the number of aviation accidents and disasters is increasing every year. The society does not have time to move away from one resonant incident, as another one, no less tragic, happens. And most importantly - as a result of the majority of such incidents, people are dying.
The "routine" of crashes
Recent years have become particularly saturated with events such as accidents in air transport, which claimed hundreds of lives. People have ceased to amaze the fact of the crash, this "routine" is terrifying.
In 2011, the total number of 1001 aviation incidents was recorded in Russia, including 835 aviation incidents and 90 aircraft damage on the ground (2010 incidents - 936 incidents, 11 emergencies and 85 aircraft damage). The number of aviation accidents last year increased by 56 percent (47 - in 2011-m, 30 - in 2010-m), and the number of dead - in 249 percent (162 - in 2011-m, 65 - in 2010-m).
2 April 2012, we witnessed the crash of the passenger plane ATR-72 in Tyumen, performing the flight Tyumen - Surgut. On board were 43 people, 32 of whom died.
Events 2011 th forced to pay attention not only to the deplorable state of aviation and transport security, but also to the ineffectiveness of legislation, inadequate management of the industry. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, in 2011, the number of Russians who died as a result of accidents (152 man) exceeded 2010-th four times (38 man), and the number of victims increased 1,4 times - to 141 man.
On June 21, the Tu-134 plane, which was carrying out the Moscow-Petrozavodsk (Karelia) flight, made a hard landing one kilometer from the destination airport. Of the people on board 52, 47 died.
The largest 2011 plane crash of the year occurred on September 7: near the point of Tunoshna near Yaroslavl, the Yak-42 crashed with the Lokomotiv hockey team. When landing at the plane the fuselage collapsed and a fire occurred. There were 45 people on board: 37 passengers and 8 crew members. Only one survived.
10 April 2010 crashed during a landing approach. Tu-154 crashed from Warsaw to Smolensk. The official Polish delegation headed by President Lech Kaczynski was sent to Katyn to participate in memorial events. As a result of the crash, all 96 people on board were killed.
Today, the Russian Federation ranks second in the world (after the US) in the number of accidents and the number of fatalities (according to Aviation Safety Newtwork, 1945 aircraft crashes that killed 338 people occurred in the period from 7439 in Russia). Not the rating in which I would like to lead, is not it?
What unites most air accidents? Of course, the causes of accidents, which are voiced on the basis of investigations. This is usually bad weather conditions, unauthorized intervention, poor state of the aircraft, low qualification of personnel (pilots, dispatchers) - the notorious human factor, poor performance of ground services of airports and the obsolescence of the airfield infrastructure. The human factor leads the list of reasons called - 68 percent of air crashes occur due to pilot error (47%) and ground services (13%). In 18 percentages of incidents, equipment fails, and in 14, the exact causes of the accident cannot be established (according to Aviation Safety Newtwork).
There is no such reason, which the experts would not mention. This suggests that there is no unified system for preventing and preventing accidents.
And after each accident, as a result of which people died, we are waiting for the answer to the main question: who is to blame? And often it turns out that either the weather or the crew members are to blame, and only when the crew dies. And the official results of the investigation do not allow to formulate a specific list of actions to prevent similar disasters in the future.
Meanwhile, society cannot ignore the facts on the surface: they are outdated aircraft, the underdevelopment of the domestic aviation industry, unrepairable runways over the years, obsolete navigation equipment, problems with flight crew training and ground services, dependence of crew commanders on airline owners who save money on security of citizens.
Legislative problems
Here, first of all, you need to pay attention to the basic federal law “On Transport Security” of 2007. Alas, its text does not correspond to current goals and objectives. It was developed on the instructions of the president and submitted to the State Duma by the government of the Russian Federation.
The peculiarity of the basic law is that in it the concept of “transport security” is interpreted only from the point of view of protecting objects of transport against acts of unlawful interference, implying acts of a terrorist nature. But more than 95 percent of the total number of accidents in transport are classified as man-made or natural, and only four percent are accidents of a sociogenic nature. Such a discrepancy cannot but affect the content of the developed system of measures to ensure transport safety and allows us to speak about security as such only in a limited, truncated form.
Separately, it is worth noting the structural problem of organizing the transport security control system, inefficient redistribution of powers among numerous agencies and agencies. The Law on Transport Security entrusts control and supervision in the field of transport security from acts of unlawful interference, including terrorist ones, to the Ministry of Transport of Russia and its subordinate agencies - Rostransnadzor, Rosaviatsiyu, Rosavtodor, Roszheldor, Rosmorrechflot. The problem of delineating the functions of various departments complicates the identification of the guilty party in the event of a terrorist act, reduces the responsibility of the competent state authorities and administrations ensuring security on certain types of transport, and leads to unnecessary spending of budget funds due to duplication of functional duties. Not to mention the means of citizens.
Today, only the lazy does not say that aviation and transport security in general should be under the control of the state. Similarly, the Constitution of the Russian Federation imposes the function of ensuring the safety of the population on the executive branch of the state. In this case, the implementation of measures to ensure state security, the protection of public order and the fight against crime is the responsibility of the government of the Russian Federation. But business entities (of which there is no doubt) will attribute their expenses on ensuring transport security to reasonable costs and include them in fares and ticket prices. Thus, a law-abiding citizen will pay for everything - once in the form of his taxes, the other - in the form of payment for the services of transport organizations.
Another drawback of the federal law “On transport security” - its implementation depends on the development and adoption of a number of subordinate regulatory acts that are not fully developed today.
Calling private reasons for frequent air crashes, officials mislead themselves and the public. The main reason for almost any aviation accident in our country is ultimately the lack of consistency in the management of the transport industry. In order to ensure aviation and transport security, it is generally advisable to develop and adopt a Code of national transportation security system, fix it in law.
However, it is necessary to take into account that at present in Russia there is essentially no single national transportation system that would include a certain control center, be a target and integral component of a higher level system and ensure the development and operation of subsystems. In this case, the nationwide system of transport security can act as a legal, normative basis for the strategy of forming a nationwide transport system of Russia and serve as an effective means of countering potential threats to the national security of a country.
In order to improve the legislative provision of transport security, as a priority, it is necessary to:
In 2011, the Committee on Transport of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, under my leadership, developed and introduced a draft law “On airports and activities at airports in the Russian Federation”. It was prepared in accordance with the “Transport Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030 of the year” and in the development of the provisions of the Air Code of the Russian Federation in relation to activities at airports. But due to bureaucratic delays, an artificial inhibition of the process occurred, as a result, the law was never adopted. And today the Ministry of Transport is not taking any steps to work together on this bill, it does not hold consultations with deputies, it does not connect to the finalization of this document.
Human factor
The next important problem is an insufficient level of personnel training and a low sense of responsibility for maintaining order in the transport industry, the lack of comprehensive management decisions in this area.
An analysis of accident investigations over the past year suggests that most accidents occurred because of errors and irregularities in flight operations of crews. In this case, the overwhelming majority of accidents are associated with an insufficient level of theoretical and practical training, an unprofessional approach to piloting, and a low quality of maintenance, and insufficient control over flight safety.
Educational institutions annually produce about 300 – 350 pilots, and about 700 people are “written off”. At this rate in three to five years there will be no one to fly. All this is happening against the background of increasing passenger traffic: if in 2008, domestic airlines carried 49,8 a million people, then in 2011 it was already 64,1 million, this year traffic is expected to increase by at least 10 percent.
All this increases the load on the flight personnel, leads to overwork and ultimately excessive psychophysical fatigue of the crews. But in any successful system, the reproduction of effective human potential is one of the necessary conditions for sustainable development.
Old Wings
The operating commercial aviation fleet consists of more than 1,5 thousands of aircraft, including 479 foreign-made aircraft. The average age of the machines is 21. The development strategy of the Russian aviation industry does not pay close attention to the development of service and aircraft maintenance. Of the existing fleet of commercial mainline and regional machines in operation, only three percent of Russian-made aircraft of the new generation. Russia has its own scientific and production potential for the development of good technology. But at this stage there is a dominance of foreign technology. And this, unfortunately, is a consequence of state policy.
This issue is on the government’s agenda. According to the latest statement by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the main task is to oust import aviation from the domestic market, for which the aviation companies-operators need to develop the necessary parameters and requirements for domestic technology, and set the technical requirements for industrialists. And the task of the state is to provide the most comfortable conditions for financing, lending.
At a meeting on the development of regional passenger traffic in Novosibirsk (August, 2012), Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia needed a new regional aircraft, which should be created independently or with the participation of private investors and foreign companies. As a result, until October 1, the Ministry of Transport was to develop and prepare, jointly with the airlines, projects for the creation of regional aircraft and on measures of state participation and support.
But as long as we continue to crash airplanes, flying either at the deadlines of operation, or with the lack of necessary navigation equipment. Take the last case in Kamchatka with An-28. There was no ground impact warning system (GPWS) on board, which, by order of the Ministry of Transport to October 1, 2012 had to be installed on all airplanes with a maximum take-off weight above 5,7 tons.
40 years ago
The development strategy of the Russian aviation industry does not have a system linkage with the airfield infrastructure - the development of aircraft construction is considered separately from the growth of the airlines and the network of airfields (airports). In addition, the issues of providing airport services and aircraft maintenance are extremely poorly traced.
According to the Ministry of Transport of Russia, for the normal functioning of the air transportation system in the country, it is necessary to put in order almost 400 airfields (airports). Nobody has money for this. All hopes for a private owner are in the form of public-private partnership projects, but there are no conditions for this either, they are not purposefully formed.
As always, there is no money for this. Budget financing of airports is critically insufficient for full modernization. According to Rosaviatsiya, in 2011, 35 billion rubles were spent on the development of 34 airports, while upgrading the network requires an annual investment of 65 – 75 billions. The budget for the coming years also does not imply significant improvements in this situation.
Excessive concentration of attention on the improvement of the international component of air transportation (for example, the Moscow air transport hub) leads to imbalances in the development of objects of a network of airports of regional and local importance.
Almost 65 percent of infrastructure facilities located on Russian aerodromes need reconstruction or major repairs. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, 70 percent of the runways at Russian aerodromes were built over 40 years ago and they have a high degree of wear. But how can you talk about the development of the airfield network, working outside the legal field? In Russia, there is still no special regulation of airport activities. For the second year, the Ministry of Transport promises to submit a bill to the State Duma for consideration. But we did not wait for him.
The increase in the number of air crashes, the increase in the number of fatalities and injuries as a result of accidents suggests that the current legislation and the security management system for transport are imperfect, sometimes contradictory, which does not contribute to the systematic solution of these issues. But there have been no cardinal decisions yet.
Unfortunately, we have to admit that the number of aviation accidents and disasters is increasing every year. The society does not have time to move away from one resonant incident, as another one, no less tragic, happens. And most importantly - as a result of the majority of such incidents, people are dying.
The "routine" of crashes
Recent years have become particularly saturated with events such as accidents in air transport, which claimed hundreds of lives. People have ceased to amaze the fact of the crash, this "routine" is terrifying.
In 2011, the total number of 1001 aviation incidents was recorded in Russia, including 835 aviation incidents and 90 aircraft damage on the ground (2010 incidents - 936 incidents, 11 emergencies and 85 aircraft damage). The number of aviation accidents last year increased by 56 percent (47 - in 2011-m, 30 - in 2010-m), and the number of dead - in 249 percent (162 - in 2011-m, 65 - in 2010-m).
2 April 2012, we witnessed the crash of the passenger plane ATR-72 in Tyumen, performing the flight Tyumen - Surgut. On board were 43 people, 32 of whom died.
Events 2011 th forced to pay attention not only to the deplorable state of aviation and transport security, but also to the ineffectiveness of legislation, inadequate management of the industry. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, in 2011, the number of Russians who died as a result of accidents (152 man) exceeded 2010-th four times (38 man), and the number of victims increased 1,4 times - to 141 man.
On June 21, the Tu-134 plane, which was carrying out the Moscow-Petrozavodsk (Karelia) flight, made a hard landing one kilometer from the destination airport. Of the people on board 52, 47 died.
The largest 2011 plane crash of the year occurred on September 7: near the point of Tunoshna near Yaroslavl, the Yak-42 crashed with the Lokomotiv hockey team. When landing at the plane the fuselage collapsed and a fire occurred. There were 45 people on board: 37 passengers and 8 crew members. Only one survived.
10 April 2010 crashed during a landing approach. Tu-154 crashed from Warsaw to Smolensk. The official Polish delegation headed by President Lech Kaczynski was sent to Katyn to participate in memorial events. As a result of the crash, all 96 people on board were killed.
Today, the Russian Federation ranks second in the world (after the US) in the number of accidents and the number of fatalities (according to Aviation Safety Newtwork, 1945 aircraft crashes that killed 338 people occurred in the period from 7439 in Russia). Not the rating in which I would like to lead, is not it?
What unites most air accidents? Of course, the causes of accidents, which are voiced on the basis of investigations. This is usually bad weather conditions, unauthorized intervention, poor state of the aircraft, low qualification of personnel (pilots, dispatchers) - the notorious human factor, poor performance of ground services of airports and the obsolescence of the airfield infrastructure. The human factor leads the list of reasons called - 68 percent of air crashes occur due to pilot error (47%) and ground services (13%). In 18 percentages of incidents, equipment fails, and in 14, the exact causes of the accident cannot be established (according to Aviation Safety Newtwork).
There is no such reason, which the experts would not mention. This suggests that there is no unified system for preventing and preventing accidents.
And after each accident, as a result of which people died, we are waiting for the answer to the main question: who is to blame? And often it turns out that either the weather or the crew members are to blame, and only when the crew dies. And the official results of the investigation do not allow to formulate a specific list of actions to prevent similar disasters in the future.
Meanwhile, society cannot ignore the facts on the surface: they are outdated aircraft, the underdevelopment of the domestic aviation industry, unrepairable runways over the years, obsolete navigation equipment, problems with flight crew training and ground services, dependence of crew commanders on airline owners who save money on security of citizens.
Legislative problems
Here, first of all, you need to pay attention to the basic federal law “On Transport Security” of 2007. Alas, its text does not correspond to current goals and objectives. It was developed on the instructions of the president and submitted to the State Duma by the government of the Russian Federation.
The peculiarity of the basic law is that in it the concept of “transport security” is interpreted only from the point of view of protecting objects of transport against acts of unlawful interference, implying acts of a terrorist nature. But more than 95 percent of the total number of accidents in transport are classified as man-made or natural, and only four percent are accidents of a sociogenic nature. Such a discrepancy cannot but affect the content of the developed system of measures to ensure transport safety and allows us to speak about security as such only in a limited, truncated form.Separately, it is worth noting the structural problem of organizing the transport security control system, inefficient redistribution of powers among numerous agencies and agencies. The Law on Transport Security entrusts control and supervision in the field of transport security from acts of unlawful interference, including terrorist ones, to the Ministry of Transport of Russia and its subordinate agencies - Rostransnadzor, Rosaviatsiyu, Rosavtodor, Roszheldor, Rosmorrechflot. The problem of delineating the functions of various departments complicates the identification of the guilty party in the event of a terrorist act, reduces the responsibility of the competent state authorities and administrations ensuring security on certain types of transport, and leads to unnecessary spending of budget funds due to duplication of functional duties. Not to mention the means of citizens.
Today, only the lazy does not say that aviation and transport security in general should be under the control of the state. Similarly, the Constitution of the Russian Federation imposes the function of ensuring the safety of the population on the executive branch of the state. In this case, the implementation of measures to ensure state security, the protection of public order and the fight against crime is the responsibility of the government of the Russian Federation. But business entities (of which there is no doubt) will attribute their expenses on ensuring transport security to reasonable costs and include them in fares and ticket prices. Thus, a law-abiding citizen will pay for everything - once in the form of his taxes, the other - in the form of payment for the services of transport organizations.
Another drawback of the federal law “On transport security” - its implementation depends on the development and adoption of a number of subordinate regulatory acts that are not fully developed today.
Calling private reasons for frequent air crashes, officials mislead themselves and the public. The main reason for almost any aviation accident in our country is ultimately the lack of consistency in the management of the transport industry. In order to ensure aviation and transport security, it is generally advisable to develop and adopt a Code of national transportation security system, fix it in law.
However, it is necessary to take into account that at present in Russia there is essentially no single national transportation system that would include a certain control center, be a target and integral component of a higher level system and ensure the development and operation of subsystems. In this case, the nationwide system of transport security can act as a legal, normative basis for the strategy of forming a nationwide transport system of Russia and serve as an effective means of countering potential threats to the national security of a country.
In order to improve the legislative provision of transport security, as a priority, it is necessary to:
- to intensify work on systematization and streamlining of legislation in the field of ensuring transport security on the basis of its systemic nature, unambiguous interpretation and elimination of duplication of functions of federal executive bodies;
- develop a plan for creating a unified transport system in Russia: identify key target functions, identify the main managing subject of the future system;
- develop and legislate security requirements for various categories of transport infrastructure facilities and vehicles, including air transport;
- develop and adopt technical regulations for equipping various categories of transport infrastructure with security systems, including special means of inspection and control.
In 2011, the Committee on Transport of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, under my leadership, developed and introduced a draft law “On airports and activities at airports in the Russian Federation”. It was prepared in accordance with the “Transport Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030 of the year” and in the development of the provisions of the Air Code of the Russian Federation in relation to activities at airports. But due to bureaucratic delays, an artificial inhibition of the process occurred, as a result, the law was never adopted. And today the Ministry of Transport is not taking any steps to work together on this bill, it does not hold consultations with deputies, it does not connect to the finalization of this document.
Human factor
The next important problem is an insufficient level of personnel training and a low sense of responsibility for maintaining order in the transport industry, the lack of comprehensive management decisions in this area.
An analysis of accident investigations over the past year suggests that most accidents occurred because of errors and irregularities in flight operations of crews. In this case, the overwhelming majority of accidents are associated with an insufficient level of theoretical and practical training, an unprofessional approach to piloting, and a low quality of maintenance, and insufficient control over flight safety.
Educational institutions annually produce about 300 – 350 pilots, and about 700 people are “written off”. At this rate in three to five years there will be no one to fly. All this is happening against the background of increasing passenger traffic: if in 2008, domestic airlines carried 49,8 a million people, then in 2011 it was already 64,1 million, this year traffic is expected to increase by at least 10 percent.
All this increases the load on the flight personnel, leads to overwork and ultimately excessive psychophysical fatigue of the crews. But in any successful system, the reproduction of effective human potential is one of the necessary conditions for sustainable development.
Old Wings
The operating commercial aviation fleet consists of more than 1,5 thousands of aircraft, including 479 foreign-made aircraft. The average age of the machines is 21. The development strategy of the Russian aviation industry does not pay close attention to the development of service and aircraft maintenance. Of the existing fleet of commercial mainline and regional machines in operation, only three percent of Russian-made aircraft of the new generation. Russia has its own scientific and production potential for the development of good technology. But at this stage there is a dominance of foreign technology. And this, unfortunately, is a consequence of state policy.
This issue is on the government’s agenda. According to the latest statement by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the main task is to oust import aviation from the domestic market, for which the aviation companies-operators need to develop the necessary parameters and requirements for domestic technology, and set the technical requirements for industrialists. And the task of the state is to provide the most comfortable conditions for financing, lending.
At a meeting on the development of regional passenger traffic in Novosibirsk (August, 2012), Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia needed a new regional aircraft, which should be created independently or with the participation of private investors and foreign companies. As a result, until October 1, the Ministry of Transport was to develop and prepare, jointly with the airlines, projects for the creation of regional aircraft and on measures of state participation and support.
But as long as we continue to crash airplanes, flying either at the deadlines of operation, or with the lack of necessary navigation equipment. Take the last case in Kamchatka with An-28. There was no ground impact warning system (GPWS) on board, which, by order of the Ministry of Transport to October 1, 2012 had to be installed on all airplanes with a maximum take-off weight above 5,7 tons.
40 years ago
The development strategy of the Russian aviation industry does not have a system linkage with the airfield infrastructure - the development of aircraft construction is considered separately from the growth of the airlines and the network of airfields (airports). In addition, the issues of providing airport services and aircraft maintenance are extremely poorly traced.
According to the Ministry of Transport of Russia, for the normal functioning of the air transportation system in the country, it is necessary to put in order almost 400 airfields (airports). Nobody has money for this. All hopes for a private owner are in the form of public-private partnership projects, but there are no conditions for this either, they are not purposefully formed.
As always, there is no money for this. Budget financing of airports is critically insufficient for full modernization. According to Rosaviatsiya, in 2011, 35 billion rubles were spent on the development of 34 airports, while upgrading the network requires an annual investment of 65 – 75 billions. The budget for the coming years also does not imply significant improvements in this situation.
Excessive concentration of attention on the improvement of the international component of air transportation (for example, the Moscow air transport hub) leads to imbalances in the development of objects of a network of airports of regional and local importance.
Almost 65 percent of infrastructure facilities located on Russian aerodromes need reconstruction or major repairs. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, 70 percent of the runways at Russian aerodromes were built over 40 years ago and they have a high degree of wear. But how can you talk about the development of the airfield network, working outside the legal field? In Russia, there is still no special regulation of airport activities. For the second year, the Ministry of Transport promises to submit a bill to the State Duma for consideration. But we did not wait for him.
Information