Lengaro pushed out

Published: 5/5/2000

The second General Director of the State Transport Company Rossiya in the last 18 months has left his post, officially because he has found another job, but unofficially, according to the Moscow daily Kommersant, because he has failed to stem the loss of pilots from the state owned airline, charged with carrying senior government officials. Yury Lengaro was appointed after the departure of Vladimir Kachanov on the 8th February 1999 after an Il-96-300 belonging to the airline collided with the Italian Prime Minister"s aircraft on the ground during a state visit to Russia, forcing him to fly home in an alternative aircraft. This followed an incident in which the then government minister, Boris Nemstov and Yeltsin"s daughter had made an emergency landing in a Rossiya helicopter in Tver region of Russia due to a badly maintained fuel system. The airline has also had considerable funding problems and there are reports of its fuel supplies being periodically suspended due to none payment of bills. While Lengaro has not had any publicly revealed failures, during his stewardship of the airlines, established as th e235 Special Air Detachment in 1956, the airline has lost over 40 pilots, which according to sources has significantly reduced the airline"s capability. Although the utilization levels of the Rossiya fleet suggest that the airline may have been overstaffed in aircrew for its current level of operations. The reasons for pilots leaving, according to letters written to the government by departing pilots, is that professional standards were falling due to lack of flying time and posed a potential threat to safety. According to reports, pilot"s flying hours have in some cases fallen below the minimum 200 hours a year required by federal regulations. The decline in hours is due in part, to the low level of government traffic and a rule that allowed only officials of ministerial rank and above to use the airline, the rest being directed to Aeroflot. This has meant that Rossiya"s fleet of 2 Il-96-300s, 12 Il-62s, 3 il-76s, 4 Il-18, 17 Tu-134s, 11 Tu-154s, 2 Tu-204, 6 Yak-40s, 2 Yak-42s and 3 An-124-100 is under utilized and spends much of its time on the ground. The airline has lent some of its aircraft to Aeroflot in the past and has increasingly tried to develop a commercial business operating scheduled flights from Moscow and according to the FSVT, carried 216,000 passengers making it Russia"s 24th largest airline. Plans to reduce the size of the Rossiya fleet in the last year have been blocked by Lengaro who was opposed to any aircraft sales according to reports. The reason for the his opposition is unclear, as Rossiya were reluctant to comment when contacted and would only say that some of the facts were incorrect, although the did not clarify which facts as the information was not for public use.

Article ID: 1548