I love the Ilyushin IL-96 (and IL-86). With the older Aeroflot livery, it looks all Russian. This video shows off the IL-96T, the freighter version, at the Moscow Airshow in 2005. She takes off, does a fly-by and then lands. Love the sound of her four Aviadvigatel PS90 Pratt & Whitney PW2337 turbofans.
Although many view the IL-96 as a less safe aircraft, no fatal accidents has ever occurred with the aircraft type (no passengers have died in the IL-86 either). I have never been able to fly on one, but it is on my to-do list. Have any of you been able to experience flying on an IL-96 or IL-86?
Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin isn’t happy that Russia’s national carrier, Aeroflot, is not purchasing domestically-built aircraft. Putin feels it is, “unacceptable,” for Russia’s flag carrier to not be supporting Russian airplane manufactures.
Aeroflot is currently in the process of taking over management of six other Russian airlines that aircraft are very outdated. Putin is strongly urging Savelvev to look at Russian aircraft options. Currently Aeroflot’s fleet only have six Russian-built aircraft, all Ilyushin IL-96’s. The rest of their fleet consists of 11 Boeing 767’s, 10 Airbus A330’s and 64 Airbus A320’s.
I can see both sides to this argument. Putin is mostly concerned about national pride and providing Russian jobs and Savelyev wants to build a profitable airline. It will be interesting to see how Aeroflot grows with additional mergers and pressure to buy domestic products.
Sometimes when you see the results of a study you just want to say, “duh!” Recently Aeroflot, Russia’s flag carrier, banned alcohol on some of its longer flights to see if it would decrease in flight disturbances. Not to surprisingly, they did see a decrease.
The ban was only for passengers in economy seats (maybe people with more money can hold their booze better?). Since the change, Aeroflot has seen a “significant fall” in the number of alcohol-related issues (this is the “duh” part).
Due to the success, the airline is continuing to ban alcohol on flights from Moscow to Havana, Bangkok, Shanghai and the Russian cities of Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky at least through the summer.
I am sort of torn with the banning of alcohol on flights. When you read about passengers going crazy on flights, 95% of the time alcohol (and/or drugs) are involved. However, flying is very stressful to a lot of people and alcohol can give passengers a certain level of comfort. Alcohol is also a big money maker for airlines. Those $5-8 you are spending on mixed drinks costs the airlines much less and losing that extra revenue would cause airlines to increase prices.
Many flight attendants I have talked to would love to see alcohol banned on flights. You can imagine, sometimes it makes grumpy passengers even more grumpy. Plus having the “I think you might have had enough, ” conversation can’t be easy.
Last September an Aeroflot-Nord Boeing 737-500 crashed and killed all 88 on board. The final report released today shows that the pilot lost “spatial orientation”, banking the plane on its left wing, causing rapid decent into the ground.
It seems the pilot had been overworked, drinking alcohol, and not trained well on the Boeing’s altitude indicator as he should. All Boeing 737 flights have been suspended until additional training can be had by the pilots.
After the crash Aeroflot severed links with Aeroflot-Nord and required they remove all the company branding — probably a very smart move considering what happened.
