Azimut Airlines found to have massive flight safety violations

Rostransnadzor together with Rosaviatsia completed an inspection of Azimut Airlines after the accident with a Superjet 100 (RA-89085) that caught fire on November 24 in Antalya, Turkey. The inspectors found more than 20 violations in the maintenance of airworthiness of aircraft, organization of flight operations and flight safety management system.

Weather afterwords: Superjet 100 landing gear will be finalized to avoid accidents

The hard landing with a punctured fuel tank in Antalya was the third such case, Izvestia found out

In particular, the facts of the airline's lack of information about SSJ-100 landings with increased overload, the admission of aircraft without the necessary maintenance and the performance of work with uncertified tools were revealed. This is stated in the inspection report dated December 11, which was read by Izvestia.

Approximately 12% of all landings in the first 11 months of 2024 were performed with SSJ-100 aircraft bouncing off the runway after touching the landing gear - i.e. "goose-stepping", the document says.

On at least six flights, the overload was more than 2g and the vertical speed was exceeded. In addition, 18 cases of exceeding the limitations of the flight operations manual (FOM) were identified.

"Repeated separation of the airplane from the runway - "goading" - is a dangerous phenomenon when the airplane starts bouncing on the runway, which is a consequence of piloting errors and sometimes a technical malfunction. "Goose-stepping" can result in increased landing overloads and destruction of the airplane structure. And if every tenth landing in an airline was performed with a bounce, it indicates problems with pilot training," said Roman Gusarov, editor-in-chief of Avia.ru.

In more than 19 cases, crews went beyond the allowable vertical descent rate at the final landing stage. Pilots did not leave for the second round even when the Sink Rate ("too fast descent") alarm was triggered, the document said.

A case was discovered where an airplane continued to fly without inspection after a rough landing. On July 15, while performing a flight from Ufa, a rough landing with an overload of 2.42g was allowed at the landing in Astrakhan, but instead of arriving at the base airfield for work, the SSJ-100 performed five more commercial flights.

For each violation identified, Rostransnadzor issued Azimut a prescription for elimination. The airline eliminated several violations even before the end of the inspection.

Read more in the exclusive material of "Izvestia":

Flight outcome: Azimut uncovered massive violations in flight safety