Russian Tu 204 passenger jet

[DFW]

A few years back, there was an Airbus plane in a Russian airline that crashed, killing all aboard. The pilots had violated the rules and allowed two teenage visitors to the cockpit to sit in the pilot and co-pilot seats. One of them disengaged the autopilot and the plane went into a spin.

The failure therefore was crew quality and possibly inadequate pilot training. I wouldn't mind flying a Russian made plane, but I'd be concerned with crew quality and with maintenance quality.

[David747]

A few years back, there was an Airbus plane in a Russian airline that crashed, killing all aboard. The pilots had violated the rules and allowed two teenage visitors to the cockpit to sit in the pilot and co-pilot seats. One of them disengaged the autopilot and the plane went into a spin.

The failure therefore was crew quality and possibly inadequate pilot training. I wouldn't mind flying a Russian made plane, but I'd be concerned with crew quality and with maintenance quality.

National Geographic Channel had a documentary on that crash. Russian pilots seemed to have gotten very good training from what I saw, but for all the training in the world, you can't train people at having discretion, and the pilot I believed invited his nephews to the cockpit and as they say, the rest is history, sad history indeed.
As far as Russian airliners are concerned, I will post another comment on this because there is an interesting article on Russian aerospace industry in AW&ST that will touch on the subject of commercial airliners in that country.

[Outsync]

I believe it was it was the auto pilot being auto disengaged if you work against it for a few seconds, I think. So they dident knew the steering was enabled again.

[earthman]

That incident was caused both by a slight irresponsibility on the part of the pilot, AND bad training. The pilots didn't know all the ins and outs of the autopilot system. Part of it remained engaged. Had they known how the system worked, they could have avoided disaster.