Scareoflot

Back in those days flying the airline was an almost nostalgic adventure. The Ilyushin and Tupolev airline interiors were tributes to the Spartan shabbiness of the Soviet concept of comfort and the unreliability of Soviet-designed passenger aircraft engines. The lavatories sometimes reeked of urine. The food could be inedible, unidentifiable, or both. But the flight crews–particularly on international routes–were fairly solid. The ability to get inside a duty free shop in Frankfort or Paris or Rome airports offered access to a cornucopia of goods almost unobtainable in Moscow and no member of a flight crew was eager to jeopardize that privilege.

Times have changed. On international routes Aeroflot now operates so many Boeing and Airbus models one could be forgiven for forgetting that the USSR used to manufacture large numbers of passenger aircraft. The trip for the average passenger is much more enjoyable than the Cold War days, but recent evidence suggests there has been a precipitous decline in the quality and professionalism of the flight crews.

On 28 December, Aeroflot flight 315 was preparing to depart Moscow’s Shermyetevo-2 airport. The aircraft, a Boeing 767, was all fuelled and prepared for take-off when the pilot began to give the “welcome on board” announcement. As soon as they heard him speak the passengers immediately knew something was amiss. His voice was incomprehensible in his native Russian and even worse when he repeated the announcement in English.

The reaction of several of the passengers was one of shock and horror. “This guy is drunk,” said one passenger on the Moscow-New York flight. “His speech was so slurred it was hard to tell what language he was speaking.”

What then ensued was an hour of frenzied arguing (you almost have to have lived in Russia to imagine what this is like) in which passengers begged the flight crew, flight attendants, and Aeroflot ground personnel (who came on board to try and assure the passengers nothing was wrong) to have the pilot and the rest of the flight crew replaced.

Perhaps the only factor that averted the tragedy that would have resulted if the pilot had actually taken to the skies was that one of the passengers on the flight was the famous Russian socialite and TV personality Ksenia Sobchak, who led the passengers calling for the flight crew to be taken from the airplane. All the evidence to date is that had Sobchak not been on board the flight would have taken off as scheduled with the pilot, Aleksandr Cheplevsky, who had just celebrated his birthday the day before, at the controls. “They [the Aeroflot representatives] only starting listening to us after Sobchak began making phone calls” on her mobile, said one of the passengers who was later interviewed by the Moscow Times. Passengers who indicated their concern about the pilot’s condition received responses that surpass even the abysmal customer service that many Western airlines have become so famous for. Cabin crew and ground personnel initially told passengers to either “stop making trouble” or get off the plane. One passenger who rang Aeroflot’s main customer service line from her mobile phone was told “it is impossible for a pilot to be drunk” and was then hung up on.

But the gold medal for Lies That Airlines Tell Passengers To Try And Brush Off Their Legitimate Complaints has to go to the Aeroflot representative who boarded the Boeing 767 during the argument between passengers and crew and announced to everyone that “it’s not such a big deal if the pilot is drunk.” According to passengers, he went on to say that “really, all [the pilot] has to do is press a button and the plane flies itself. . . . The worst that could happen is he’ll trip over something in the cockpit.”

After an hour of demands by those on board to see the pilot he exited from the cockpit and was described as being red-faced, bloodshot eyes, and unable to walk without weaving. “I don’t think there’s anyone in Russia who doesn’t know what a drunk person looks like,” said one of the passengers. Cheplevsky then told the passengers plaintively “I’ll sit here quietly in a corner. We have three more pilots. I won’t even touch the controls, I promise.”

In the days after the incident Aeroflot representatives refused to comment, telling members of the press who inquired to “read about it on the internet.” The same Aeroflot representative, Irina Dannenburg, took another page from the playbook used by so many airlines these days: when all else fails find some excuse to shift blame to the passenger. In this case Dannenburg not only refused to admit to–or even comment on–Aeroflot’s appalling disregard for basic international flight safety regulations, but instead stated that the airline would sue Sobchak if the costs to Aeroflot for delaying the flight turned out to be “very large.”

The story has a happy ending in that thanks to the adult supervision provided by Sobchak and others on board the entire flight deck crew was replaced and the airplane safely reached its destination at New York’s JFK. But the manner in which Aeroflot handled the incident is unpardonable.

Accident investigators looking into the causes for a September 2008 crash of an Aeroflot-Nord flight that killed all 88 persons on board stated that they found unacceptably high alcohol levels in the blood of the pilot. There should have been no other airline on the planet more sensitive to the issue of the condition of its flight crews, and yet the Russian carrier displayed not only a shocking ambivalence about Cheplevsky’s condition, but also attempted to tell a string of incredible lies about the true dangers of a drunken pilot.

Still also unexplained is what the company has done with Cheplevsky. At last report he was being treated for an “unspecified condition.” Aeroflot has not admitted that he was drunk and unfit for duty at the time, but instead stated that he might have suffered a stroke just prior to the flight–as if that would excuse the airline’s conduct.

Even more mysterious is why this late December incident remained covered up by Aeroflot until weeks later. Neither a full disclosure of the events of that evening nor an apology from Aeroflot was forthcoming until the first week of February 2009.

In a larger sense this episode illustrates the degree to which almost all segments of Russian officialdom now feel empowered to ignore the international standards that are supposed to govern the behavior of nations–particularly those nations that aspire to membership in the EU. Russia’s airline cares for the safety of its passengers in the same manner that the Kremlin cares for the civil rights of its citizens. Aeroflot’s calloused indifference about what could have happened to the lives of those on board flight 315 is just a symptom of a larger nationalistic attitude that says “what the rest of the world thinks does not matter.”

It is a small wonder that Tunne Kelam, an Estonian member of the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, recently wrote “Europe must stop thinking of Russia as a ‘normal’ strategic partner. The European Union should forget any notion that Russia is a friend, ally or reliable partner. Russia’s strategic interests in Europe directly oppose those of the EU. Moscow wants to split the EU apart and is trying to set old and new member states against each other.”

For the sake of those nations close to Russia’s border one hopes the rest of the EU figures this out sooner rather than later. In the meantime, avoiding Aeroflot as a choice in air travel seems like a wise precaution.

Reuben F. Johnson is a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online.