Rosaviatsiya puts an alarm – Newspaper Kommersant No. 194 (7395) dated 10/19/2022

According to Kommersant, the Federal Air Transport Agency has developed and sent carriers guidelines on the actions of crews in the event of an aircraft hijacking or hijacking. For the first time, the regulator compiled a list of 15 airports for an emergency landing of a hijacked aircraft. Airlines and airports say they regularly conduct emergency briefings and update their response plans. Experts note that in recent decades, the number of attempts to hijack aircraft in the Russian Federation has been declining: the last case occurred in 2001, and since then the control systems at airports have been seriously improved. However, in their opinion, updating the regulations is important in the face of international tension.

As it became known to Kommersant, on September 22, Rosaviatsia sent out methodological recommendations to the airlines on the procedure for hijacking or hijacking aircraft and choosing airfields “for forced or forced landing of a hijacked vessel.” The document developed by the regulator, which Kommersant got acquainted with, was signed by the head of the Federal Air Transport Agency Alexander Neradko on August 31. As Kommersant’s interlocutor in the Ministry of Transport emphasized, it was decided to create the methodology following the meeting of the operational headquarters of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee on December 14, 2021, and this “is not related to recent events.” The document itself indicates that it was drawn up in accordance with government decree No. 943 of August 15, 2018 (on interagency cooperation when checking information about the threat of a terrorist attack on transport).

In the new methodology, the air regulator proposed a specific sequence of actions during capture.

In the appendix to the document, the Federal Air Transport Agency provides a list of airfields in the country recommended for landing in the event of capture. The list includes two airports of the Moscow Air Hub (MAU) and 13 other major regional airports of the Russian Federation.

Upon receipt of “reliable information about the hijacking of the vessel”, the crew of the aircraft must select one of these airfields for an emergency landing and, by radio, transmit information about the emergency to the dispatchers of the State ATM Corporation and to the flight control center (MCC) of the airline. Further, the ATM and MCC should bring the information to the territorial departments of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense. The further sequence of actions and “the information necessary to ensure landing” are provided by air traffic controllers, the document states.

Detailed recommendations for airports are not provided in the regulations, but, as one of the sources of Kommersant in UIA told, “all the mechanisms have long been worked out and described in the internal rules for working out emergency situations agreed with the regulator.”

In Domodedovo, Kommersant was told that they regularly conduct exercises in order to work out various emergency situations, “including this one.” “A clear algorithm of actions is provided, based on international practice and Russian legislation,” they said.

Each Russian airline has its own Emergence Response Plan (ERP, emergency response plan), which is approved by the Federal Air Transport Agency and provides for procedures for acts of unlawful interference in the activities of the carrier, said a representative of Red Wings. He stressed that the carrier “regularly updates the ERP, taking into account the recommendations of the regulator.” S7 Airlines noted that the company has relevant instructions, and the crews and ground services are annually trained and instructed in aviation security. An interlocutor in one of the major airlines added that the vast majority of aircraft in the Russian Federation are equipped with air traffic control transponders for automatic transmission of information to dispatchers. They respond to the dispatcher’s request with a four-digit code (7700 – “emergency on board”, 7500 – “aircraft hijacking”). This code (squawk code) is set by the pilot on the control panel, after which the emergency alert system is activated on the control radar. In the Aeroflot group and other airports, Kommersant did not answer. The Federal Air Transport Agency and the Ministry of Transport refrained from commenting.

Since the 1950s, about 30 hijackings or attempts to hijack aircraft have been officially recorded in the USSR, in most cases the criminals demanded to be taken out of the country. The most famous incident occurred in 1988, when a family jazz ensemble of 11 members of the Ovechkin family hijacked a Tu-154 on the Irkutsk-Kurgan-Leningrad flight with a demand to send it to the UK. The hijackers carried firearms and explosives on board, killing nine people during the assault. From 1900 to 2001, according to experts, there were about a dozen episodes of hijacking. The most notorious were the two captures of the Tu-154 “Vnukovo Airlines”. So, in November 2000, the Makhachkala-Moscow flight, at the request of the terrorist, after refueling in Baku, was redirected to Tel Aviv, the plane was landed at a military base in southern Israel, where the criminal was detained without casualties. In March 2001, the Istanbul-Moscow flight was hijacked by three terrorists who demanded to fly to Saudi Arabia. The liner landed in Medina, where during the assault one of the invaders was shot dead, the passenger and the flight attendant were killed. The last incident occurred in Domodedovo in 2010, when a passenger on a flight from Mineralnye Vody demanded that the crew communicate with the leadership of the Russian Federation: he was not armed and was promptly detained.

The number of hijackings over the past 20 years has been declining due, among other things, to the improvement of pre-flight screening of passengers, says Alexander Lanetsky, CEO of Friendly Avia Support.

In addition, frequent hijacking attempts in the USSR were provoked by “a very limited opportunity for the majority to get into capitalist countries, which became a trigger for criminals.” But the fight against international terrorism remains the focus of attention of all world intelligence services, and given the escalation of the foreign policy situation, updating the regulations is a move in the right direction, the expert points out.

The basic principles of action during the hijacking or hijacking of an aircraft are regulated by three international treaties: the Tokyo Convention (of December 4, 1969), the Hague Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft (October 14, 1971) and the Montreal Treaty of 1999. All of them have been ratified, including by Russia, and contain the very definition of hijacking an aircraft, key recommendations (in particular, maximum assistance to the commander of the aircraft to regain control on the ship). Countries tend to develop and negotiate with regulators and other countries more detailed guidelines for airports and airlines, he says. The Hague Convention provides for mandatory reporting of every hijack attempt to the ICAO, and despite the exclusion of the Russian Federation from the organization’s governing board, the expert notes, this obligation remains in place: “Given international tensions, it is important to avoid isolation in the fight against crime in air transport.”

Aigul Abdullina