Rosaviatsia recommended that pilots be retrained in flying using the international altitude detection system

Rosaviatsia recommended that all pilots and flight controllers be additionally trained using the international QNH altitude detection system in order to avoid disasters such as the crash of the An-24 near Tynda. There are currently 132 airfields operating in the Russian Federation under QNH pressure. By the end of 2025, 33 more will be added to them.

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The fate of the airline, whose plane crashed on July 24, will be decided by the Federal Air Transport Agency.

"There are two rules for determining flight altitude in Russia. The Soviet QFE takes the runway as zero, and the international QNH takes the sea level. The latter began to be introduced when foreign cars flew in en masse and international ICAO standards were adopted," Andrei Litvinov, a first—class civil aviation pilot and aviation expert, told Izvestia.

The Federal Air Transport Agency stressed that "the use of QNH is an international practice, it is safer than QFE. At the same time, there are no plans to exclude the possibility of QFE flights."

However, there are significant drawbacks to the parallel application of the two standards. For example, Khabarovsk operates according to the Soviet QFE standard, while Blagoveshchensk (Ignatievo) and Tynda operate according to the international QNH standard, Andrey Patrakov, founder of the RunAvia flight safety service, told Izvestia. As a result, the Khabarovsk — Blagoveshchensk — Tynda AN-24 flights fly to airfields with different altitude indicators. This situation can lead to crew errors, especially on airplanes of the 70s with a low level of flight automation, where everything is based on the human factor, the expert notes.

The Federal Air Transport Agency explained that the main difficulty in retraining pilots from QFE to QNH is the need to switch between altitude reference systems at different airfields, which creates an additional burden on the crew.

"However, all this burden is offset by mandatory high-quality airline training and simulator training, which guarantees reliable adaptation for all pilots. Safety is ensured by strict adherence to procedures, the use of detailed control charts and mandatory cross—control in the cockpit," the agency is confident.