RUSSIAN PARLIAMENT SEEKS $3BLN FOR CIVIL PLANES AFTER CRASHES

RIA Novosti
13:23 | 22/ 09/ 2006

MOSCOW, September 22 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s lower house of parliament
intends to demand $3 billion to buy new airplanes for the country’s
civil fleet, the speaker of the State Duma said Friday.

Hundreds of people have died in the last six months in three major
air crashes, and Speaker Boris Gryzlov said MPs would discuss a draft
address to the country’s leadership about the need to allocate the
money when civil aviation was discussed at a meeting October 11.

A deputy from the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, Alexei
Mitrofanov, said the money should be allocated in the wake of many
air crashes that have blighted the country recently.

"It would be right to demand up to $3 billion to buy new planes
because our planes crash one after another," he said.

At least 170 people were killed, including 45 children, in August
when a Russian-made Tu-154 jet en route from a Black Sea resort to
St. Petersburg came down in stormy weather in eastern Ukraine. In July,
124 passengers and crew lost their lives when an Airbus crashed upon
landing making a domestic flight in Siberia.

Another 113 people died on May 3, when an Armenian Airlines plane
flying to Russia also crashed into the Black Sea.

Pilots have also been forced to make a number of emergency
landings. The latest involved a Tu-154, which was forced to touch down
in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia earlier this month after an engine failure.