Demonstration flights (certified tests) of planes at the presentation of new long-distance planes of the Tupolev aircraft corporation
Photo: Alexey Kudenko
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United Air Front
// The battle over the seat of the head of the Russian sky is underway
The Vertical of Power
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed Wednesday a decree to create the Federal Air Navigation Service under the Government. The new agency is supposed to unite the structures of the Defense and the Transportation Ministries responsible for the air traffic. A federal law, to be submitted by the Government to State Duma in three months, will include the list of functions, property and employees to transfer from the ministry to the new service. The draft will also describe the procedure of the shaping of the new federal body. The struggle over the seat of the agency’s head has already begun, and, the military stand good chances, according to sources of Kommersant in the Government.
Functions on the air traffic management in Russia have been shared until recent times between the Transportation Ministry (mainly, State Corporation on the Air Traffic Management in the Russian Federation) and the Defense Ministry (the Department of the Airspace and the Air Traffic Control). The idea of the unification of all the elements of the air traffic management into one structure has been debated since mid-2004 but the matter did not proceed to the implementation. Agencies argued who would be in charge of the new organization: either civilians or the military. They seem to have finally come to a compromise. The press service of Vladimir Putin released on Wednesday an announcement on the establishment of the Federal Air Navigation Service following the presidential decree. The new service will be subordinate to the Russian Government directly.
The cabinet of ministers has been instructed to confirm a provision on the Federal Air Navigation Service within three months and indicate there that the new service enjoys functions of the state regulation, control and supervision in the use of the Russian airspace. Besides that, the agency will deal with the navigation service and the organization of the united system of air and space search and rescue. The Federal Air Navigation Service will also handle state property, will license and certify in the air navigation field, will set rates of dues for air navigation servicing and the procedure of their levy, will command funds acquired from the dues and will issue permits on transit flights of foreign aircrafts and for the crossing of Russian borders.
Within the framework of the creation of the Federal Air Transportation Agency, the president also ordered the Government to redistribute functions now carried out by the Transportation Ministry, the Federal Service on the Surveillance in Transportation and the Federal Agency of Air Transportation. “State unitary enterprises and institutions needed for the new agency to fulfill its functions” will be also transferred to the Federal Air Navigation Service. The Government will also confirm the list and fix the schedule of the dismissal of the bodies of military management, the military units and the institutions whose property is to be transferred to the new agency, and draw up lists of military men attached to it.
A special task was set for Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov. He was instructed to make changes in the structure of his agency within three months to comply with the decree. For these purposes, a draft on the establishment of the Federal Air Navigation Service will be drawn up and submitted to the State Duma.
The Defense Ministry told Kommersant Wednesday that they supported the president’s decision. “The previous system was not efficient, which was clearly seen from the summer incident with the plane of Vietnam Airlines. It was the last straw,” they said at the ministry [Kommersant wrote on the incident on July 13-14]. The ministry also makes it a point that the submission to the new service “suits the military perfectly”. The list of the services, the employees and the property to be transferred from the military is unknown yet. The ministry estimates that some thousand people will have to change the place of their work. “The order of the interaction between the Federal Air Navigation Service and the Air Force will be worked out within the next three months since the military will secure the borders of Russia and its airspace,” they say at the Defense Ministry.
Officials at the Transportation Ministry declined to comment on the system of the air traffic management pleading the pressure of work. Viktor Davydenko, acting director general of State Corporation on the Air Traffic Management (the enterprise’s head Oleg Alexeev is away on a business trip) reported to Kommersant that it was “too early to speak” on real steps on the shaping of the Federal Air Navigation Service and the place his company would occupy in the new organization. “I would like to assure you that our state corporation will remain and will keep on working in the Federal Air Navigation Service,” Mr. Davydenko emphasized.
Meanwhile, high-placed sources of Kommersant in the Government say that the acute competition for the seat of the new service’s head is now developing between civilians and the military. Mikhail Kizilov, Lieutenant General and the head of the Defense Ministry’s Department of the Airspace and the Air Traffic Control, is described by Kommersant’s sources as an odds-on favorite in this battle. The head of the state air corporation Oleg Alexeev may have good chances too. “But a military man is more likely to be appointed because the Defense Ministry virtually cuts off the solid well-built structure, while civilians will have to gather their part piece by piece.” the source of Kommersant maintains.
Kommersant will track the development of the events.
Renata Yambaeva, Ivan Safronov
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 08, 2005
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