By James Marson And Robert Wall
MOSCOW--Russian investigators blamed negligent airport
management and the alleged intoxication of the driver of a snowplow
that drove on to the runway for a crash that killed Total SA's
chief executive and three crew.
The accident highlights the risk of "runway incursion," a
problem that rarely leads to fatalities and still affects countries
with a better record of managing aviation than Russia, where safety
remains spotty.
Russia's Investigative Committee said Tuesday that it opened a
criminal probe into the crash, which happened just before midnight
when the jet clipped the vehicle, burst into flames and plowed into
the runway at the Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow's
southwest. The committee said it had detained the driver and was
investigating whether he or air-traffic controllers had made an
error that led to the crash. A lawyer for the driver said he wasn't
drunk, was directed to where he was by flight dispatchers and was
being made a scapegoat.
"It's already clear that the cause of the incident wasn't a
tragic set of circumstances...but the criminal connivance of
officials who were unable to ensure coherent actions of airport
staff," Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a
statement.
The accident is a rare example of a fatal runway incursion that
aviation authorities around the world have spent more than a decade
trying to eradicate.
Such incidents often happen when air-traffic controllers
mistakenly clear an aircraft for takeoff or vehicle drivers drive
on to a runway when they shouldn't, aviation experts said.
Russia has in recent years experienced a number of air crashes
blamed on inadequate infrastructure or crew errors. Five crew were
killed in 2012 when a plane overshot the runway at Vnukovo;
forty-four people died after a plane carrying a hockey team crashed
in 2011; and 96 were killed, including Polish President Lech
Kaczynski, when their plane crashed on landing in 2010.
"When there have been accidents in Russia there are often
cultural issues at play," said Paul Hayes, head of safety at
aviation consultancy Ascend.
Total CEO Christophe de Margerie had been in Moscow for an
annual meeting with government ministers on foreign investment in
Russia.
Investigators said his private jet hit the snow-removal vehicle
shortly after beginning its takeoff run en route to Paris. Video
broadcast on state television news showed the smoldering fuselage
of the upturned plane on grass next to the runway.
Investigators said they questioned the driver, Vladimir
Martynenko, for five hours and that tests showed he was under the
influence of alcohol. They gave no precise details as to the
alleged level of intoxication of the driver, who was placed under
detention for two days. Russia has a zero-tolerance law for alcohol
while driving, meaning any alcohol in the blood is considered
intoxication.
A lawyer for the driver said medical records showed Mr.
Martynenko wasn't under the influence of alcohol at the time of the
incident and doesn't drink alcohol because of a chronic heart
complaint. The lawyer, Alexander Karabanov, said Mr. Martynenko was
driving his vehicle in accordance with flight dispatchers'
instructions.
"We don't want all the guilt for the incident to be shifted on
to an ordinary person," he told Interfax news agency.
Video broadcast on state television showed a gray-haired man in
blue and gray overalls, apparently the driver, being walked to a
car by police officers.
A spokeswoman for the airport said all airfield-service
employees have a medical examination before and after their shifts.
She declined to comment on this particular case.
Investigators said they also were checking to see if bad weather
or pilot error were to blame. The airport said in a statement that
visibility was 350 meters (1,155 feet) at the time the plane tried
to take off.
The Moscow-led Interstate Aviation Committee began an
investigation into the crash, saying it had retrieved the flight
recorders and would also assess air-traffic controllers' recordings
and surveillance footage.
France's air-accident office, the BEA, is sending a team of
three investigators to assist the probe, along with two from
charter service Unijet and one from Dassault Aviation SA, which
made the Falcon 50 jet.
The global aviation community has made tackling runway
incursions a priority since 2001 when the United Nations'
aviation-safety body began an outreach effort to try to improve
awareness.
In the U.S., vehicles or pedestrians blundering on to active
runways account for roughly 17% of all runway incursions, or
incidents in which planes come closer than allowed to other planes
on the ground or to something else located on the runway. Pilot
mistakes cause roughly four times as many incidents.
Big airports in the U.S., Europe and Asia, rely on layers of
safety equipment and specific practices to guard against
plane-vehicle collisions on runways. The U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration is working on more technologies to help warn
operators of potential hazards. In more-remote locations,
inadequate infrastructure, including substandard fences around
airports and poor adherence to procedures has made reducing runway
incursions more of a challenge, aviation experts said.
The FAA has placed a priority on curbing such instances, which
it said numbered 1,241 in the U.S. in fiscal 2013, 11 of which were
rated as serious. That is down from 67 serious incidents in fiscal
2000, according to an FAA report.
Most such incidents don't cause high fatalities, though there
are exceptions. In 1977, two Boeing Co. 747s collided on the runway
of a Tenerife airport killing 583 on board--still the deadliest
crash in commercial flying. In Russia, 178 people died when an
Aeroflot Tu-154 jet while landing at Omsk struck a vehicle in
1984.
Olga Razumovskaya, Nonna Fomenko and Andy Pasztor contributed to
this article.
Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com and Robert Wall at
robert.wall@wsj.com
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