BAL Bashkirian Airlines

BAL Bashkirian Airlines (Bashkirskie Avialinii, Russian: ООО «Авиакомпания „Башкортостан“») was an airline with its head office on the property of Ufa Airport in Ufa, Russia. It operated regional and trunk routes from Ufa and charter services to Europe, Asia and North Africa. It filed for bankruptcy and suspended operations in April 2007.^{[citation needed]}

History

The airline was originally set up as an Aeroflot division and was formerly part of the Samara-based Aerovolga. It had 1,513 employees at the time of its dissolution. In 2006, its licence was revoked by the Russian safety agency FTOA. It was due to relaunch services in November 2006 following an inspection of one of its Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft in Iran, when the FTOA ruled that safety legislation had been met and services could restart.

Notable incidents

• The Überlingen mid-air collision occurred on 1 July 2002 over southern Germany between a Bashkirian Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 and a DHL Boeing 757 cargo plane. The Tupolev operated Flight 2937, a chartered flight from Moscow-Domodedovo to Barcelona, with most of the passengers consisting of schoolchildren from Ufa, who had arrived in Moscow by train before boarding the plane to go on a holiday trip to Spain. All 69 people on board the Tupolev, as well as both pilots of the cargo plane, died in the crash.

Destinations

As of January 2005, BAL Bashkirian Airlines operated the following services:^{[citation needed]}

• Domestic scheduled destinations: Moscow, Nadym, Nizhnevartovsk, Novy Urengoy, Saint Petersburg, Surgut and Ufa.

• International scheduled destinations: Baku, Dushanbe, Istanbul and Yerevan.

BAL Bashkirian Airlines also operated charter flights to Sharm-el-Sheik, Hurghada, Cairo, Tunis and Barcelona.

Code data

• IATA Code: V9
• ICAO Code: BTC
• Callsign: Bravo Tango Charlie

Fleet

The BAL Bashkirian Airlines fleet totalled eleven aircraft, included the following marques, as of August 2006:^{[citation needed]}

• 3 Antonov An-24
• 3 Tupolev Tu-134A
• 5 Tupolev Tu-154M

External links

• Media related to BAL Bashkir Airlines at Wikimedia Commons
• bal.ufanet.ru (Archive, 1999-2001)
• aircompanybal.ru (Archive) (Russian)
• bal.ufanet.ru (Archive) (Russian)
• "Russian airline's 'good safety record'," BBC