Posted on 07/13/2005 9:21:04 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
Xangxong Vietnam Airlines' flight VN525, a Boeing 777-200, landed at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow yesterday morning. For almost two hours, while the plane was in Russian airspace, military dispatchers considered it in violation. Civilian dispatchers, in spite of the plane's lack of permission, guided it in to Domodedovo. The incident is especially piquant due to the fact that the airliner followed not far behind Vladimir Putin's plane. The General Staff and the Ministry of Transport will hash out the incident today.
Xangxong Vietnam Boeings fly twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, between Hanoi and Domodedovo. However, the Vietnamese did not file an application in time for flight 525 with the center for air traffic planning and regulation of the Single System of Organization of Air Traffic of Russia (OATR). Therefore, when, at 5:34 a.m. Moscow time yesterday, the plane entered Russian airspace from Kazakhstan, it was identified by the Russian Air Force as a violator.
The Samara regional OATR at Kurumoch Airport was immediately notified of the airplane's presence. The military demanded that civilian dispatchers keep the plane in the air ("placing the plane in a holding zone") while the reasons for its unauthorized presence were determined. However, after talking with the Boeing's pilot, dispatchers allowed it to continue on to Moscow, against of rules on air space usage. This happened in spite of a prohibition on the plane's use of Russian airspace placed on it by the head of the Samara OATR, who ordered the civilian dispatchers to send the plane out of Russian airspace and the implementation of a "signal" routine for it (that is, the plane declared a violator of existing flight routines).
The military did not take further measures to hinder or reroute the aircraft, however. Kommersant has information that military jets were not launched to intercept the Boeing. As a result, at 7:01, the Vietnamese airliner landed at Domodedovo and, several hours later, after receiving the necessary written clearance, returned to Hanoi.
Eight hours after the incident, the Ministry of Defense released a statement to Interfax-AVN news agency saying that responsible persons in the civilian sector of air traffic control, in spite of the threat of terrorism, including terrorism using flying craft, committed actions that could have led to an emergency situation and a provocation of the Russian Air Force to decisive actions with irremediable consequences. The statement mentioned as an example of such consequences the incident in September 1983, when an Su-15TM shot down a Boeing 747 belonging to the South Korean KAL Airlines in the airspace of the USSR over the Sea of Japan, killing 269 passengers.
The Air Force refused to comment on the situation yesterday, saying that the Defense Ministry traffic control as subordinate to the General Staff. The General Staff said only that the incident would be settled "between the Defense Ministry and the state corporation under the management of the Ministry of Transportation that organizes air traffic." The cause of such an extreme reaction by the Defense Ministry to what a Kommersant source in the Transport Ministry characterized as an unremarkable incident is the Defense Ministry's desire to play a dominant role in the airspace of the Russian Federation. The military is certain that the incident is evidence of the systemic failures of the existing system arising from its interagency structure and the lack of a single commanding organ.
The Vietnamese liner may have attracted the military's attention also because Vladimir Putin's plane had flown through the area only a few hours before, landing in Astrakhan at 1:45 a.m. on Tuesday. According to rules introduced in Russia after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, routes taken by the presidential plane are to be "cleansed" of all other planes not only before the president passes, but for several hours afterward as well.
Kommersant will continue to investigate the incident.
The Air Force found a violator
The Russians need to improve their ability to identify aircraft overflying their territory. The airplane pictured couldn't possibly be a 777, because it has four engines.
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I flew on Vietnam Airlines last year from Saigon to Nha Trang and from Dalat to Saigon, good service, not a big fan of the plane, an ATR72.
They will be flying to the US within the next year or so.
I just read it - wow....
Can't believe they didn't shoot him down...
They've done it before....
Fortunately you didn't get any icing on the wings.
My last vacation I was on the ATR 72 about 5 times, with Bangkok Air (a fantastic airline), and Lao Aviation (its a Laos based airline, very low expectations easily met!)
Goes to show they learn from their mistakes.
What's the Russians big worry about Putin's aircraft when it arrived 6 hours and 45 minutes earlier? I could see 1 or 2 hours, but 7 almost?
At least this one didn't land in Red Square! Anyone remember Mathias Rust?
They're neo-Commies and Russians. Paranoia is the only way of life over there.
I doubt they'd have shot down Vietnamese even back then.
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