Pilots-for-hire play with death in Africa
Published 17 October, 2007, 05:52
The African Continent is a number one destination for Russian pilots in search of shady jobs. They work at cargo transportation services, flying Russian-made planes that have long since seen their best.
Among the pilots, the jobs are regarded as risky but well paid. Meanwhile, the death rate for the pilots in Africa is as high as in combat. At least a Russian pilot with experience of flying the murky African routes says so.
It all started like a fun adventure – a chance to earn a quick buck and to see the world. They were flying planes in no condition to be flown, they transported weapons and smuggled people.
Site of Russian plane crash in Congo
It didn’t end well for a pilot Igor Gudkov. When he returned from one of his flights to Africa, he died from tropical malaria. His flight partner, Aleksandr Garnaev, who shot a home video of their adventures, says they wish they had known what they were getting into.
“It only occurred to us later how dangerous our job was,” admitted Aleksandr Garnaev, test pilot.
Africa is now the largest illegal job market for CIS pilots – they have no contracts, no insurance and no guarantees. They crash, go missing, or even commit suicide. Igor and Aleksandr realised they had reached the point of no return after they were called to make an urgent delivery to Luanda, Angola.
“We landed in Tel Aviv and were shown a vast amount of boxes. When we were told we had to transport weapons, we were outraged. But we were threatened with breach of contract and jail. We flew a sideline route, dangerously overloaded, and landed in Luanda on the last drop of fuel,” Aleksandr Garnaev added.
Aleksandr Garnaev, pilotThe pilots are romantics, everyone thinks: “It won’t happen to me.” It’s hard to see the news on TV about our planes and our crews crashing in Africa. I want to tell them to come back, things have changed and there is plenty of work here in Russia. Stop gambling with your life and come home.
Breaking the rules and pushing their luck became their trade. One man who experienced one of those flights over war-torn Angola is Luis Graham-Yooll.
“We knew these weren’t official pilots, we were told they were Ukrainian, the plane we were flying in was very old. It was covered with burn marks, the tyres were almost completely bald to the extent that we thought that it could burst at any moment, especially on landing,” said Luis Graham-Yooll, photojournalist.
Lack of maintenance of the planes is the number one cause of crashes. A cargo plane crashed two weeks ago in the Democratic Republic of Congo killing all people aboard including five Russian and Ukrainian pilots.
About 200 pilots from the CIS now legally work under contract in Congo alone. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
“Our authorities have no control over the pilots working there, they are on their own, accepting the contracts and benefits, or the lack of them. We are aware of the grey schemes going on in Africa, but some pilots are willing to take the risk,” claimed Oleg Smirnov, president of the Civil Aviation Fund.
Pilots from the Soviet Union flooded foreign airlines in the early 1990s when the USSR fell apart. Jobless, many of them considered themselves lucky if they managed to get an African gig.
Aleksandr and his crew realised they were never going to get paid what they were promised. They reported their flight manager to the police, and hijacked their IL-76 across the globe: Johannesburg – Moscow. Friends helped to refuel.
“The pilots are romantics, everyone thinks: ”It won’t happen to me.“ It’s hard to see the news on TV about our planes and our crews crashing in Africa. I want to tell them to come back, things have changed and there is plenty of work here in Russia. Stop gambling with your life and come home,” urged Aleksandr Garnaev.
discuss it
