Nur wieso nicht einfach die Flugsicherung anfunken und um Landeerlaubnis bitten? Das war eine Übung und ich bezweifle das die deutschen Phantoms die zur Zeit das NATO Air Policing über dem Baltikum durchführen, einen russischen Jet nach einem Notruf abgeschossen hätten. Ich finds einfach pervers, dass der aussteigen muß anstatt zu landen um dann nach Russland zurück zu fliegen. Das kann nicht nur dem Piloten das Leben kosten, sondern auch denen die das Wrack auf den Deckel bekommen.
Kranke Politik...
LG, Bernhard
ANN wrote:Major Troyanov's Bad Flying Day
Russian Pilot Crashes, Is Briefly Jailed in Lithuania
By Aero-News Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. O'Brien
Think you've ever had a bad flying day? Put yourself in Valery
Troyanov's flying boots. He started September 15th briefing-in for
a routine training flight in one of the world's most advanced
fighter planes. But the exhilarating takeoff was the last thing
that went really right for him that day (well, his ejection seat
didn't malfunction -- that's good news, I suppose). At the end of
the day, he was in a foreign jail.
How does your worst "bad flying day" measure up to that?
Major Troyanov is a fighter pilot with the 177th IAP (Fighter
Aviation Regiment) at Lodejnoe Pole (ICAO Identifier ULPO) east of
St. Petersburg. He flies the Sukhoi Su-27, a supersonic air
superiority fighter that's the pride of the VVS, the Russian
Military Air Forces. And the mission, according to Russian sources,
couldn't have been more routine.
The jets -- three, not as a flight but three single-ships at
periodic intervals -- were to launch, fly to Chkalovsky Air Field
which is near the city of Kaliningrad, and conduct joint air
defense exercises with Russian Baltic Fleet units in
Kaliningrad.
The three Su-27s launched at ten-minute intervals. Troyanov was
the last of them. His next task was to navigate to Kaliningrad
while staying in Russian or international airspace. Here's where
things went wrong.
Kaliningrad Special Region of the Russian Federation is an
interesting place. From its founding by the Teutonic Knights in
1255, the city was populated by Germans, by pre-Germanic Prussian
Balts (a dead race who spoke and wrote a dead language), by Poles
and by merchants of many nations. Until 1946 it was called
Konigsberg; ethnically cleansed of Balts by the Teutons, of Poles
and Jews by the Nazis, and of Germans by the Soviets in turn, it is
now a Russian enclave surrounded by EU and NATO powers.
It's the only place in Russia that kept its Stalinist name.
If you flight plan from Lodejnoe Pole (ULPO) to Chkalovsk -
Lyublino-Novoye (UMWD) you'll see it's quite impossible to get from
here to there without getting passed through NATO-protected
airspace, or flying over the Baltic Sea. The flight was planned
over the Baltic Sea. You can see from the map that while making
landfall in Russian territory requires precise navigation, with
working equipment it shouldn't be a problem.
For the other members of the mission it wasn't.
Not so Troyanov. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense,
his Sukhoi suffered a complete failure of navigation equipment. So
he contacted ground control and asked for help, confessing his
disorientation.
The controllers couldn't pinpoint him on their radars. Finally,
Troyanov elected to circle while trying to get re-oriented. Soon
enough even that option was foreclosed to him, as he ran low on
fuel. Maj Valery Troyanov's bad day must have seemed to hit rock
bottom when he came to the decision to eject from what was, apart
from any nav malfunction, a perfectly functioning jet.
Fortunately, Troyanov got a good chute, and landed unhurt (and
on land, rather than in the frigid Baltic). So things were looking
up. He got out a cell phone and -- lo and behold! He had a signal.
Dialing his unit, he talked to the commander of the 177th. He was
still on the phone with the boss ("the good news is, you didn't
lose a pilot. Now for the bad news") when local first responders
arrived, alerted by a phone call from a citizen who saw a
parachute.
And that's when Valery Troyanov learned he wasn't down in
Russia. He was in Lithuania, and the relations between the Russian
government and the onetime Soviet satellite state of Lithuania
never get better than frigidly correct. He might have been feeling
like an airman who had survived a narrow escape, but now the
treatment he could look forward to ranged from "arrested as an
illegal immigrant" to "shot as a spy." Pretty unpleasant outcomes,
these, for a simple jet jockey.
Troyanov was taken into custody and brought to the police
station, where police and intelligence agents questioned him. He
then was removed to the military airfield at Kaunas, where flight
surgeons examined him and gave him a clean bill of health. Then he
was locked up for the evening.
Meanwhile, Lithuanian searchers had found the remains of
Troyanov's jet and posted guards on it. There was, of course, no
postcrash fire, and to the chagrin of the Russian military,
sensitive items (particularly the IFF module) appear to have
survived the crash.
Lithuanian diplomats delivered a frosty demarche to Russian
counterparts, who routinely deny airspace incursions. In this case,
there's no point in denial, as the Lithuanians had physical
evidence in the form of Troyanov and what's left of his plane.
Lithuanian prosecutors have also started a criminal case on the
border violation.
They also had other evidence: radar tapes. Troyanov's bad day
could indeed have been worse, because Lithuanian air defense is in
the hands of a NATO contingent from Germany and the Lithuanian
radar had been tracking him for at least six minutes, and jets were
inbound.
Of course, interception might not have been such a bad outcome
for Troyanov, as the German Phantoms would have escorted him to a
safe landing. He would have still ended up under lock and key, but
his airplane would have been intact, and sooner or later he and the
plane would have been let go. Sometime this week the Russians will
probably either get the wreckage of the Su-27 back, or at least get
access to the accident site. After all, those pieces of jet might
be out of place, but they are the property of the Russian
people.
And Troyanov? He has already been let go. What about that
criminal case? Well, he was never the defendant, only a witness,
the Lithuanians say -- and he's already given his statement.
Of course, by the end of his bad day, Major Troyanov had one
more discomfiting event befall him: he was the subject of
discussions between Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and his
commander's commander, Major General Vladimir Sviridov of the 6th
Army Air Force and Antiaircraft Defense of the Leningrad Military
Region (yes, the Russians changed the name of the city, but not the
military district. Maybe they had a lot of letterhead already
printed).
While Major Valery Troyanov will, one hopes, never have a day
anywhere near this bad in the rest of his flying career, this
incident will certainly have consequences in the Baltic region. It
may also have far-reaching consequences in the Russian military --
there is already a widespread belief in Russia that military
aviation is operating on a shoestring. If Troyanov was sent into
harm's way by bad maintenance or cut corners, this could become a
political football in Russia. It could be quite some time before
the Major is back to the comfortable obscurity of one fighter pilot
in a big Air Force.
Der Originalartikel ist hier zu finden: http://www.aero-news.net/news/military.cfm?ContentBlockID=3c18a68f-42b0-48a2-a470-a33d5dabd4a8
