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Incidents involving air hooligans in Russia in 2013

2014 started with an latest incident involving Ural playwright Nikolai Kolyada, who was removed from flight for drunken appearance

MOSCOW, January 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Following are cases of "airborne hooliganism" in Russia in 2013, cited in connection with the latest incident involving Ural playwright Nikolai Kolyada, who was removed from flight for drunken appearance

 

On January 11, 2013, a drunken passenger on Moscow-Hurghada flight on board an A-320 plane belonging to the Kogalymavia company beat up a flight attendant and tried to force his way into the cockpit. The Russian Investigative Committee opened criminal proceedings against Saratov-based entrepreneur Sergei Kabalov over attempted hijacking of aircraft. After the trip to Egypt, Kabalov did not return home and was put on the international wanted list. He was detained in Belarus' Grodno region on March 7, 2013. On May 18, police escorted him to Moscow and put him in a pre-trial detention center. Kabalov was found guilty by a panel of jurors on December 9, 2014, of attempted hijacking of aircraft. The jurors also found him guilty of insulting the crew and battery. However, the entry on Kabalov's hitting flight attendant Denis Vakhin in the face was taken out of the verdict. Kabalov is facing seven to 12 years in prison. Moscow City Court is due to review his case on January 20.

On January 22, Alexander Zubkov and his two friends who all were in a state of alcoholic intoxication, boarded an A321 plane at the Ufa airport. The plane was bound for Hurghada. During the flight, the trio behaved impudently, taking no notice of the rebukes by flight attendants. The plane's commander called police, but Zubkov refused to comply with the police officers' legitimate demands and attacked one of them. On June 26, Bashkortostan's Ufa district court fined Zubkov to 30,000 roubles for the brawl, finding him guilty of violence against a government representative.

On February 3, passenger Smorodinov on a plane of the UtAir airline flying from Moscow to Sharm el-Sheikh, threw insults at his fellow passengers and flight attendants, smoked in a lavatory, damaged the plane's kitchen unit and tried to break through into the cockpit. Flight attendants overpowered and kept him tied till the end of the flight. He was handed over to Egypt's law-enforcement bodies but the Egyptian authorities did not punish him. After his return from Egypt to Moscow on February 10, Russian police detained Smorodinov.

In February, Vyacheslav Ismailov, a businesman from Podolsk, Moscow region, who was flying to Thailad for holiday, started a row on board Aeroflot's A330-300. The row escalated to a fight and Ismailov hurt several people during the scuffle. The plane made an emergency landing in Uzbekistan. The rioter was removed from flight and passed to local authorities. In September, the Podolsk Court fined Ismailov 494,000 roubles.

On April 22, a plane en route Moscow-Shanghai made an emergency landing in Novosibirsk because of a drunken hooligan.

On August 8, the crew of a plane belonging to the Belarusian company Belavia, on a flight from Moscow to Minsk, requested emergency landing after taking off from Moscow's Domodedovo airport because of hooligan actions by passenger Andrei Kuznetsov, a Kazan resident. The plane made a successful landing, and police detained Kuznetsov. On the same day, the Domodedovo town court sentenced him to five days of administrative arrest. Kuznetsov pleaded guilty.

On October 8, an incident occurred on an Aeroflot airliner bound for Moscow from St Petersburg, in which chairman of the committee on labor, social policy and veterans' affairs under the State Duma lower house of Russia's parliament Andrei Isayev and his aide Alexander Poglazov were removed from flight for violating rules of conduct. The flight was delayed. Poglazov was fined 100 roubles for drunken appearance in a public place. Isayev made a public apology and stepped down as Deputy Secretary of United Russia's General Council in connection with the incident.

On October 7, flight attendants barred chairman of the Volgograd Election Commission Andrei Sirotin from boarding the flight to Rostov-on-Don. Sirotin was drunk, and a protocol of administrative offense was drawn against him. He was relieved of his duties on October 18. However, Volgograd's Dzerzhinsky district court, after reviewing details of the incident a month later, cleared Sirotin and exempted him from responsibility because of "a lack of the event of administrative offense."

On December 15, a Boeing-737 belonging to the Globus airline en route Krasnoyarsk-Moscow with 115 passengers on board, made an emergency landing at the Tolmachyovo airport in Siberia as a drunken passenger attacked and beat up a flight attendant after being denied access to a business-class lavatory. The air hooligan was later identified as acting Director General of Rosgeologia Andrei Tretyakov. He was accused of hooliganism and faced a 300,000-rouble to 500,000-rouble fine or compulsory work for five years or five-year imprisonment. On December 20, the court in the town of Ob, Novosibirsk region, sanctioned a two-month arrest of Tretyakov.