 Russia has become the most dangerous place in the world to fly, according to figures from the Aviation Safety Network.
The country now surpasses even the Democratic Republic of Congo in the number of plane crash fatalities this year. One hundred and twenty people have been killed in eight fatal accidents - all of them in Russian-built aircraft. Sky News' Moscow Bureau gained exclusive access to a factory that continues to make the planes most feared by passengers. At first glance the chilly hangar looks like an aircraft museum. It contains the shells of seven aircraft.
The sound of a man drilling what was, or will be, a plane door, echoes through the vast space. It indicates that this is a working factory. Further in, more woolly hat-clad workers chat and smoke cigarettes while they paint, solder and hammer away at vast chunks of Russian planes. Before now, no foreign journalists have been given access to Aviacor, one of the largest aircraft manufacturers in Russia, which produces Antonovs and Tupolevs - names that increasingly make passengers shudder.
Between them they have been in six fatal crashes this year alone. But the government doesn't want to look deeper into the problem, because it's too expensive. It's so much easier to blame it on dead pilots.
Andrei Litvinov, pilot Cutting-edge industry this is not. The company currently makes one new plane a year. Its main business comes from renovation and repair. One Tupolev is 25 years old. It looks ready for the scrapheap but it is actually here for its third service. In a few months, it'll be carrying passengers again. Polish President Lech Kaczynski's Tupolev was serviced at Aviacor before it crashed killing all 96 people on board. Pilot error was blamed, as it is in most cases. Aeroflot pilot Andrei Litvinov says this is often a lazy excuse: "Sometimes human error does play a role. But, if they make you ride on a rusty bike and you fall, you're not the one to blame, are you? "The government doesn't want to look deeper into the problem, because it's too expensive. It's so much easier to blame it on dead pilots." Russia's most recent air disaster wiped out the Yaroslavl hockey team who were flying in a Russian-built Yak 42. Take non-Western built aircraft like these out of the equation and Russia would have a near-perfect safety record. Aeroflot has worked hard to shed its Soviet image - investing in a fleet of Boeing and Airbus planes. But Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has urged them to buy Russian. Looking at Aviacor's factory, it's hardly a tempting business prospect. Nor is encouraging for the millions of passengers for whom air travel is a necessity in a vast country. In June, a Tupolev crashed in Petrozavodsk, killing 47 of the 52 people on board. Alexandra Kargopolova is one of the few who survived. Her plane was replaced by a Tupolev at the last minute.
Fans of the Yaroslavl hockey team mourned in their thousands
She says that if she'd known, she'd have refused to fly: "I was sitting on the left. I could see a family with two children sitting on the right, a girl and a boy. The girl was sleeping. And the boy was absolutely terrified. People understood what was going on. No-one was screaming or panicking. But we knew." All four members of that family were killed when the plane hit trees on landing. "Without very strong sleeping pills I start hearing and seeing the first blast and its aftermath. Before the explosion people were screaming. They tried to save themselves, get out of the rubble, crawl away. "Right after the bang everything went silent. Not a sound to be heard. This is the scariest thing. I saw everything - bodies lying beside me. It was terrible." President Medvedev has said ageing Soviet fleets will be taken out of service by next year and the government has also promised more investment. With the Winter Olympics and football World Cup on the horizon, Russia's air safety record is now of grave global concern.
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