Proceedings over the plane crash in Perm have begun in the United States

In the Illinois District Court in Chicago, a trial began between representatives of Alexei Afonasenkov, the father of one of those killed in the Boeing 737-500 plane crash in Perm, with the US Federal Aviation Agency. The victim’s lawyers believe that the government agency, which, by agreement with the Russian government, oversees the retraining of Russian pilots to fly Boeing, “was negligent” in this process, which is why the accident ultimately occurred. According to analysts, the case “has no prospects,” since the “authorities of the country of registration of the aircraft” must monitor the pilots’ fitness to fly. The petition against the US Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) was brought forward by Chicago-based law firms Nolan Law Group and Ribbeck Law Chartered. Lawyers intend to prove that the FAA was “negligent” in preparing Russian pilots who died on September 14 in a plane crash in Perm to fly on Boeing. The lawyers refer to the intergovernmental agreement between Russia and the United States that has been in force since 1998, according to which the FAA is responsible for overseeing this process. Note that without a retraining certificate, no pilot has the right to fly Western aircraft. Thus, the commander of the crashed plane, Rodion Medvedev, who flew Boeing for 452 hours, was trained in 2006 at the Boeing center in Denver, which is also supposed to be controlled by the FAA. “The Russian pilots there were not trained well enough,” said Nolan Law Group spokesman Thomas Ellis.

Boeing 737-500 flight Moscow - Perm of Aeroflot-Nord company crashed on September 14 while landing in Perm. All 82 passengers and six crew members on board were killed. The investigation into the case continues. On November 19, the Interstate Aviation Committee announced that mathematical modeling of the accident had been completed, and its results would be sent to all countries, including the United States. Nolan Law Group and Ribbeck Law Chartered began preliminary proceedings Wednesday evening in a Chicago court. Lawyers through the court requested the information they were interested in from Boeing, Flight Training International (trained pilots) and Wells Fargo Bank, which, according to representatives of relatives of the victims, owned the plane and leased it to ARN 737 Limited, which provided the board to Aeroflot-Nord "(previously the owner was the American Pinewatch Limited). So, at Boeing, lawyers were interested in the names of employees related to the crashed plane. “We are clarifying information about individuals and companies that may be involved in the disaster. We are preparing supporting documents for the claim,” explained Mr. Ellis. The judge ruled that the lawyers' request must be granted by December 4. As Kommersant previously reported, Alexey Afonasenkov’s lawyers are preparing to file a lawsuit against the FAA in the amount of $10 million. “This is a unique case that can create a precedent,” said Thomas Ellis. “Mr. Afonasenkov’s main goal is not money,” added Sergei Malenko, a Russian representative of American lawyers. “He wants to change the pilot retraining system.” Mr. Malenko told Kommersant that “several dozen” relatives of the victims are ready to support the lawsuit, whose names he refused to disclose, explaining that the relatives of the disaster victims themselves asked him about it.

However, some experts note that in the United States there has been an increase in litigation in which “dubious lawyers prey on victims of incidents, gather them into interest groups and organize similar investigations in the hope of receiving large fees if the claims are successful.” “Fees can reach 40–50% of the amounts collected,” said Boris Rybak, CEO of the consulting company Infomost. Note that in the 1980s and 1990s, some companies in the United States managed to win rather strange cases. Thus, one group of lawyers, suing the Cessna company, managed to prove that the pilot of one of the planes it produced died not from a collision with a mountain, but from the fact that the seat in the plane came off when it crashed into the mountain. Another group tried to sue the light-airplane manufacturer Piper for failing to state in its operating instructions that it was prohibited from flying while intoxicated. “This practice almost destroyed small aviation in the United States, after which companies began to hide behind paperwork more carefully,” explains Mr. Rybak. And the proceedings of the Nolan Law Group and Ribbeck Law Chartered, in his opinion, have “no prospects” at all, since the FAA “does not have the slightest connection to the matter”: “According to international agreements, the aviation authorities of the country of registration of the aircraft must maintain the fitness of pilots to fly ( The crashed Boeing was registered in Bermuda. Therefore, lawyers will look for clues, file endless petitions - this is a business in the hope of receiving tens of millions of dollars.”
Alexander Voronov;
Dmitry Sidorov, Washington

Kommersant (Perm) No. 212 from 11/21/2008

The crashed Boeing was processed into the waiting room