IAC was pecked by the grain – Newspaper Kommersant No. 8 (7453) dated 01/18/2023

After a long-term conflict, the Ministry of Transport decided to take full control of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), removing Tatyana Anodina, who had held this position since 1991, from her post as chairman. Oleg Storchevoi, former deputy head of the Federal Air Transport Agency, has been appointed to her place. Sources of “Kommersant” in the IAC call the actions of the ministry illegal, emphasizing that the procedure for changing the leadership took place in violation of the charter. Lawyers add that the dismissal of an employee during his temporary disability is not allowed, and the coup in the MAC took place when Tatyana Anodina is in the hospital.

On January 17, the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation unexpectedly announced the deprivation of Tatyana Anodina of the post of chairman of the IAC, which she had held since 1991. Instead, Oleg Storchevoi, the former deputy head of the Federal Air Transport Agency, was appointed. The Ministry of Transport said that the meeting of the Council on Aviation and the Use of Airspace was attended by authorized representatives of all states parties to the IAC agreement. A new version of the regulations on the council itself, regulations on the MAC, as well as a package of documents regulating the financial activities of the committee, were approved, the ministry added. In the IAC, the situation is called “illegal”.

The decision to reappoint the chairman, according to Kommersant’s sources, according to the charter, can only take place through a quorum of the majority of representatives of the countries of the agreement. According to the statement of the IAC, the committee did not organize a meeting on January 17, and the provision of the work of the council by other persons is not provided for by the agreement “and cannot be called a session of the council.”

Kommersant’s interlocutors among the leaders and employees of the MAK say that the committee “plans to continue working as usual,” and consider Tatyana Anodina as their chairman.

The next meeting of the IAC Council was planned to be held at the end of January in Moscow, it is not clear whether it will take place now.

Meanwhile, Tatyana Anodina is now in a hospital in Moscow. According to Kommersant’s sources, she is aware of what happened “and intends to seek the return of the situation to the legal channel.” According to labor law, the dismissal of an employee during his temporary disability is not allowed, emphasizes Ilya Zharsky from the Veta expert group.

A high-ranking Kommersant source in the industry believes that the decision of the Ministry of Transport to take a drastic step and completely subdue the IAC could be facilitated by the “international situation”, given the “lack of attention of foreign regulators” and possible leverage on “partners from the CIS countries”.

Relations between the Ministry of Transport and the IAC were traditionally difficult, but the conflict intensified in 2015, after the conclusion of the committee following the investigation of the Boeing 737 crash in Kazan. The IAC recognized the aircraft’s design flaws as the cause and suspended the certificates for the Boeing 737. The Federal Air Transport Agency found no reason to suspend operation, after which the IAC accused the agency of inaction affecting flight safety. The roots of the conflict, as was believed in the industry, are related to the crisis around Transaero in 2014: Tatyana Anodina’s son Alexander Pleshakov was the main owner of the bankrupt airline, and the head of the MAK herself owned 3% of the shares.

In 2015, as a result of the acute phase of the conflict, the government deprived the IAC of some of its powers, redistributing the functions of certification of aircraft between the Federal Air Transport Agency, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. But in practice, in subsequent years, the functions of the Aviation Register of the IAC and the Aviation Register of the Russian Federation were duplicated.

The interlocutor of Kommersant, close to the Ministry of Transport, calls the incident “a logical continuation of the 2015 decision.”

He assumes that this was done in order to “harmonize and unify certification work in the country”, since “two aviation registers existing in parallel looked absurd.”

Some of Kommersant’s interlocutors believe that it was certification “as the most financially significant” part of the committee’s work that became the reason for the authorities’ interest in the IAC, as well as the reason to lure the certification specialists who remained there into the structures of the Federal Air Transport Agency. Others believe that the Ministry of Transport was interested in creating a fully controlled and loyal body for the investigation of aircraft accidents.

In any case, now the MAC in its current form will probably “lose its meaning” and cease to exist, believes the director of Infomost, Boris Rybak. “Only Russian equipment will be able to certify the “new MAC”, and it is obvious that the other countries participating in the agreement will finally migrate to the sphere of influence of EU and US regulators, including in terms of accident investigations,” he said.

Aigul Abdullina