Dramatic falls in flying hours causing real safety problems (450 words)

Published: 10/3/2000

The Russian Air Force has reported that flight safety is of increasing concern to them as it experiences a dramatic growth in incidents. According to the air force during the 1980s the level of accidents have increased from only 1 accident per 26,000 flights hours to 1 accident per 12,000-13,000 hours during 1999-2000. The cause of the rise is attributed to the low levels of training given to flight crews; who during the last decade have seen their number of hours flown each year ,due to budgetary constraints, dramatically decrease from 2,170,000 to 140,000 -150,000 hours. With individual pilot's hours falling to a very low 10-25 hours on average, substantially below the air force's own requirement of 150 hours a year. This substantial decline is believed to have contributed to nearly 85% of air force accidents and the situation is unlikely to improve according to the safety department of the air force given current fiscal circumstances. As air force spending represents only 11% of the defence budget compared with 35% for the US Air Force, and even then, budgeted funds fail to materialize. The rise of accidents is also worsened by the air force's operations in the civilian cargo market, where a number of incidents involving over laden air force aircraft and pilot errors have caused concern for the civilian aviation authorities. Leading to complaints form cargo operators that military aircraft are not subject to the same constraints relating to safe operation as their civilian “competitors” and are therefore a safety as well as a commercial threat. Predictably the deteriorating condition of the air force's aircraft fleet is another factor in the worsening safety situation. New aircraft have not been acquired in any numbers since the early nineties and funding for the maintenance of aircraft linked with poor morale has led to declining standards. A problem identified by Major General Sergey Solntsev of the Flight Safety Service at the end of last year, who attributed engineering mistakes on the ground as being the cause of 50% of accidents. Radio and technical ground equipment has also long passed its safe life with some items of equipment in operation exceeding safe operating lives by 2-3 times. The air bases that the air force operates from are also reported to be in poor condition with more than 40% of military bases regarded by the air force as being in “critical” condition.

Article ID: 2103