visits

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin's plane took off from Lisbon to Santiago three hours late. The delay was caused by an emergency situation that arose at Lisbon's Portela de Sacavem airport, where the Russian president's plane made a stopover to refuel en route from Moscow to the capital of Chile.

In Santiago, Vladimir Putin is scheduled to hold talks with Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, and then the Russian head of state will take part in the next summit of heads of state members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization. However, yesterday an unexpected obstacle arose on President Putin’s route to South America, which was created by a passenger airliner of the Spanish airline Iberia Airlines, which made an emergency landing at Lisbon Portela de Sacavem airport at about 3.00 (GMT).

An Airbus A-340-600, taking off on a regular flight from Madrid to Mexico City, was forced to land in Lisbon after the on-board equipment already over the Atlantic signaled smoke in the cabin. The emergency airliner blocked the airport’s main runway, and President Putin’s Il-96-300PU, which was landing at that time, had to be landed on a shortened auxiliary runway. At this time, 288 passengers were evacuated from the Airbus. Eight passengers and a flight attendant were injured during the emergency landing. Then, for almost three hours, technicians examined the Spanish plane, but the cause of the smoke was never determined. All this time, the A-340-600 stood on the runway, preventing President Putin’s Il-96 from taking off.

Note that the presidential Il-96-300PU of the state transport company Rossiya has no luck at all at Lisbon airport. On September 29, when the presidential route was being flown over, on the way back from Brazil (after Chile, Vladimir Putin will also visit this country), during takeoff at Portela de Sacavem, a pigeon hit one of the Il-96 engines (see Kommersant on September 30). The plane had to stop taking off, and technicians spent a long time troubleshooting the problems (however, according to the official version of Rossiya, the flight was then delayed due to erroneous operation of sensors, which showed that the engines did not reach takeoff mode).

The Portuguese Directorate of Airports and Air Navigation confirmed to Kommersant correspondents that the reason for yesterday's delay in the departure of the presidential plane was indeed the Iberia airliner. But this company treated the incident completely calmly. “What happened in Lisbon is not an accident,” Iberia representative Consuela Arias told Kommersant. “Our company sent an additional plane to Lisbon, which took passengers from the affected flight and flew to Mexico City at about 16.00 local time.”

ALENA Kommersant-MIKLASHEVSKAYA, ALEK Kommersant-AKHUNDOV; JUAN COBO, Madrid

Vladimir Putin slowed down in Lisbon