Pulkovo Airlines owned a Tu-154 liner that crashed August 22 in eastern Ukraine en route from a Russian Black Sea resort to St. Petersburg, killing 170 passengers and crew on board. The crash was the latest in a string of plane accidents to hit Russia recently. An investigation into the cause of the crash is still under way.
Prosecutors and aviation watchdog experts, in particular, inspected two Tu-154M passenger jets right before the take-off.
"The flight books do not contain records on the latest repairs, and schedules for sanitary checks have not been observed," prosecutors said.
Inspectors criticized the runways as sometimes unsatisfactory and pointed to ongoing landing incidents caused by poor runway maintenance and encounters with birds.
"Some [landing] incidents were a result of poor discipline among crew members and violations by them of rules for crews and aircraft," prosecutors said.
Prosecutors opened two administrative offence cases and issued seven warnings to the airport and the air carrier.
They also conducted checks at the Gorskaya airfield, used by an air club. Inspectors said there was no fencing around the airfield, which was guarded by two men not qualified for the job, the runways were in poor condition, and fire-fighting equipment was absent at the airfield and its premises.
Russia recently saw an increase in the number of plane accidents, including the S-7 Airbus 310 tragedy at the Irkutsk airport July 9, which claimed 124 lives and left another 70 injured.
Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov has ordered stringent measures to ensure flight safety on Russian airliners. He directed Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is also a deputy prime minister, to take charge of the efforts, and to submit a report September 1.
"Your approach to this work should be decisive and severe," Fradkov told the defense minister. "If the conclusions lead to structural changes or a personnel reshuffle, I am willing to consider them and make the decisions if necessary."
