Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise

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Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise

IATA FV	ICAO PLK	Callsign Pulkovo
Founded		24 June 1932
Fleet size
Destinations
Parent company		STC Russia
Headquarters
Key people
Website: http://www.pulkovo.ru

Pulkovo Boeing 737-500

Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise (Pulkovo Air) was an airline based in St Petersburg, Russia. It operated the Pulkovo Airport and was 100% state owned. In November 2006 a merger was completed with the smaller Rossiya Airlines to form a major new company under the State Transport Company Russia (Rossiya Airlines) name. ^[1]

1 History
2 Services
3 Incidents and accidents
4 Fleet
5 External links
6 References

[edit] History

The airline was named after the area where it is located, along with the village of Pulkovo and Pulkovo Observatory. The airline began on 24 June 1932 with the landing of two aircraft from Moscow at the newly-constructed Shosseynaya Airport south of Leningrad. Air travel expanded rapidly, and in 1939 Shosseynaya Airport operated 29 routes, carrying 6,305 passengers, 708 tons of cargo, and over 333 tons of mail.

The airport became known as Pulkovo in the late 1950s. The airport complex consists of two separate terminals which are so far away from each other than can they can be classified as separate airports.

Pulkovo Airlines used Aeroflot livery until ordered to change it in 1997 so to avoid confusion. Pulkovo Airlines joined IATA in June 2000.

As of 2003, it employs about 7,000 workers. In the first half of 2003, it carried 911,563 passengers, of 515,720 were domestic and 395,843 international and CIS flights. It also carried 3,753.6 tons of cargo, of which 3,138.5 was domestic and 615.1 international and CIS (this last was an increase of 34% over the same period in 2002).

[edit] Services

Main article: Pulkovo destinations

[edit] Incidents and accidents

Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise airliner IL-86 RA-86060 crashed shortly after takeoff with 16 crew on board, at 3:25pm local time on July 28, 2002, from Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport while on a repositioning flight to St. Petersburg. Witnesses reported seeing the aircraft enter a steep climb immediately after takeoff, bank left, and crash into a forest near the end of the runway. Initial examination of the aircraft's Digital Flight Data Recorder indicates that, two seconds after liftoff, the plane's horizontal stabilizer spontaneously shifted to a full nose-up position. The Captain immediately pushed the control yoke fully forward in an attempt to lower the aircraft's nose, but was unsuccessful in doing so. Two flight attendants aboard survived.

On August 22, 2006, Pulkovo Airlines Flight 612, a Tu-154 airliner with 160 passengers and 10 crew on board en route from Anapa to St. Petersburg, crashed near Donetsk in Ukraine. The flight crew attempted to navigate through high clouds containing an extremely powerful thunderstorm, but abnormally high ambient temperature had decreased the lift. Airplane entered an uncontrolled spin and could not recover. [1] All hands were lost. The investigation by The Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) determined that the causes of the crash were airplane entering a stall condition due to excessive angle of attack and lack of airspeed in manual flight mode due to insufficient control and cooperation among the flight crew members.

Victoria Shcherbina (LJ user saint-autere) reacts to the news of the August 22 Tu-154 crash in eastern Ukraine, which killed all 170 people on board, by writing (RUS) about the death of her father - IL-86 navigator of Pulkovo Airlines Valeriy Shcherbina - in a crash at Moscow Sheremetyevo International Airport four years earlier, on July 28, 2002. Complete text in Russian, in short in English, and the article: "The daughter of the pilot: flying by Pulkovo write the will".