The crash of the plane underscores Russia’s security profile, regional problems | Flight Issues

Aircraft crash on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula is a sign of aviation safety crisis and a major problem in its vast Far East region that is still growing despite the high salinity, according to experts.

All 22 passengers and six occupants of the An-28 flight, including two children, were killed when the plane crashed into a rocky outcrop on Lake Okhotsk northwest of Kamchatka, a volcanic Pacific island in Russia, on a dark Tuesday afternoon.

Many bodies have been exhumed from frozen water.

Rescue workers are continuing to clear other areas about 20 kilometers (about 8 sq miles) in search of debris and aircraft recorder, the Emergency Ministry aircraft has said.

There is no final confirmation of the cause of the crash on Tuesday, but Russian government officials say the cause could be a pilot’s faults, bad weather or technical damage.

The incident highlights a major problem for Russian small aircraft that have been using aircraft for decades that require better equipment, such as landing equipment, which ensures good flight, experts told Al Jazeera.

New weapons could increase the use of any airport in bad weather – something that is well-known in aircraft as “meteorological minima”.

“This will provide an opportunity for more seasonal weather, when the potential for departure and landing is possible,” Oleg Panteleyev, a Moscow-based specialist at Infomost Consulting agency, told Al Jazeera.

Russia also has a world-class security record.

According to a 2018 report by the Interstate Aviation Committee, a body that oversees air safety standards in the Soviet Union, pilot faults account for 75% of air crashes and other accidents in Russia and other former USSR countries.

Russia’s most recent terrorist attacks include December 2016 fire, a fighter jet crashed in the Black Sea after taking off from Sochi International Airport, killing 92 people – including 64 members of the choir en route to Syria to take part in the Russian military.

In November 2013, a Boeing-737 in which the Russian company Tatarstan crashed in the Volga city of Kazan, killing 50 passengers and their crew.

In April 2010, all 96 pilots aboard a Polish Tupolev-154 fighter jet carrying the Polish president and Polish officials died in an accident near the western Russian city of Smolensk.

“There is one major carcass accident per year,” Mikhail Barabanov, a researcher at the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a think tank in Moscow, said in a Facebook post in 2019, shortly after the sudden arrival of the Aeroflot SSJ-100 Aircraft in Moscow killed 41.

The dying area

In Kamchatka, airplanes are the only reliable way to visit this region, the largest island in the United Kingdom with a population of about 320,000.

The Kamchatka mountain ranges, numerous rivers, and the Siberian climate limit the building of asphalt.

“There are no roads and no place [transport] “It’s just a few blocks along the coast,” Moscow Air Force Specialist Roman Gusarov told Al Jazeera.

“That’s why they operate small local aircraft, especially those with turboprop engines, which can land in small airports with airports,” he said.

Airplanes are important in Russia, the largest country in the world, while long-distance glaciers make roads more unreliable and impassable.

Kamchatka exemplifies this situation in Russia – as well as the reason why the eastern part of the 143 million country is facing a major crisis.

“There are no highways in the north of the island,” said Natalia Sushko, a native of Kamchatka.

He was born on the southern island 62 years ago, but moved to the “continent”, as Russia is called there, in 2013.

“Kamchatka is incredibly beautiful, but that’s it. Summer lasts for two to three months, but throughout the year there is rain, humidity, cold, wind and storm, ”says Sushko, who now lives in another part of Moscow.

His departure is part of a trip to Kamchatka and all other parts of Russia, a North-Asian military that crosses Alaska, China, North Korea and Japan and accounts for two-fifths of Russia.

This is more than the rest of Australia, but the population is only 8.2 million. And it was 20% lower before the Soviet era.

Despite promises of civil rights, the population is still largely out of control, and by 2050, there may be fewer than four million people living there, experts say.

Aircraft and helicopters of all kinds contributed greatly to the Soviet Union in promoting the wealthiest regions.

Communist Moscow has established an airline that transports people, food, drugs, medical equipment and grass.

“We used to fly across the grass to the Far North so that the children could drink milk,” Vitali Shelkovnikov, head of the Moscow Flight Safety Research Center, told Al Jazeera.

Grass-eating cattle were blind for several months in the Arctic, but their milk was safe for children, he said.

Acceptable answer

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered his condolences to the bereaved families, and the regional ambassador promised $ 5,000.

“We will do anything to help [you] Survive the tragedy, “Vladimir Solodov told the families of those affected by the town of Palana.

Some people, however, believe that the accident could have been avoided – because the same plane crashed into the same rock nine years ago.

In 2012, an An-28 with 14 people climbed the Pyatibratka (Five Brothers) stone. Only four pilgrims survived, and an Orthodox wooden cross with the names of the dead was inscribed on the site.

Locals promised to rock the rock or change the runway to Palana. Aviation officials agree with the idea, according to a report published in Kamchatka Info.

But officials did not respond. “He didn’t even care to answer,” a local resident told Al Jazeera before naming him.