Prosecutors question competence of air transport agency’s head

MOSCOW, Oct 3 (PRIME) – Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office told Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov that the lack of action from the Federal Air Transport Agency to improve the situation in civil aviation led systemic bankruptcies of carriers and suggested he consider firing agency’s head Alexander Neradko, as seen by PRIME in the document on Tuesday.

VIM-Avia has delayed a large number of flights since mid-summer to September 25, when it admitted to having no money to continue operations and the need to stop charter flights. The government and Aeroflot issued statements pledging financial support to VIM-Avia.

“To study the issue of disciplinary responsibility of officials, inducing competence of head of the Federal Air Transport Agency Alexander Neradko and his Deputy Klim O.S.,” the document read, suggesting that Sokolov should toughen control over activities of the agency and ensure its strict compliance with the aviation legislation.

The prosecutors said that VIM-Avia’s failure happened because the agency did not undertook any serious measures to stabilize the situation in civil aviation. This “systematically leads to bankruptcies of Russian airlines…and to massive violations of rights of passengers, and demands spending of large sums of budget money to eliminate negative consequences of these bankruptcies,” prosecutors said.

Sokolov told reporters that VIM-Avia’s debt exceeded 10 billion rubles and the fate of the company lied in the hands of creditors. The airline owes about 7 billion rubles to banks, 1.5 billion rubles to airports and air traffic controlling authorities, and about 3 billion rubles to foreign airports. Leasing companies may also submit claims against the airline, he said.

“They have not yet announced any claims as they are sympathetic about the current phase of operation to bring back tourists and passengers, but it is obvious that they will have claims as the company does not make leasing payments,” he said, adding that the emergency center only pays wages to employees of the airline.

But the situation with VIM-Avia will not lead to an increase of prices for flight tickets in Russia as the company was not a large one and the local market is very competitive.

“Taking into account the fall of passenger traffic in the autumn-winter period, there will be no difficulties with passengers of VIM-Avia and those who planned to fly with this company, we will redirect the flow without any problems,” he said.

The ministry is now discussing improvement of control over financial and economic condition of airlines, and allowing the Federal Air Transport Agency to interfere actively in the activities of airlines in emergency cases. Authorities are also discussing insurance mechanisms that they may implement together with tourism businesses to prevent tourists from flying to resorts without a return ticket, he said.

The ministry also said in a statement that it plans to develop a system of minimizing risks of unexpected bankruptcies of Russian airlines. Sokolov plans to explain details of the mechanism to the State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, on Wednesday, the authority said.

(57.8134 rubles – U.S. $1)

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