The crash of an Aeroflot airliner in the Siberian taiga, with the loss of 75 lives, may well have been due to "a defect in the plane's system," as an air traffic control official speculated, but the air disaster nonetheless gives cause to consider the Russian airline's dubious safety record.


The crash of the Aeroflot Airbus on Tuesday night was the airline's second major air disaster this year. The first, in January, killed more than 120 people, bringing the toll for 1994 to nearly 200.


Russian officials admit that they have difficulty maintaining Western standards. This is more than obvious to passengers by what goes on during flights.


Travelers on Aeroflot are forced to put up with a variety of unsafe situations that should be beyond the pale for any professional airline. On a recent round-trip flight from Moscow to Sochi, the range of safety violations was unnerving, if all too common.


Several seats had no safety belts and the purser's announcements were noticeably slurred -- which is hardly surprising, since many passengers saw him drinking vodka.


The standard safety announcements at the beginning of the flight were never made, but then that too is common. Flight attendants ignored a major safety violation -- passengers smoking during the landing. The attendants also did nothing to stop passengers standing in the aisles while the plane taxied down the runway after landing.


Fortunately, however, for once the plane was not noticeably overcrowded. No passengers were sitting in the aisles or leaning against the exit door. One of the flights was eight hours late, but maybe the passengers were lucky -- the airline probably had to ground a faulty aircraft.


If all those problems are visible to the average airline passenger, it is frightening to imagine what is not visible, notably the mechanical condition of the planes.


Transport Minister Vitaly Yefimov said after the January crash that "the situation in Russia corresponds to all safety standards."


At least one major international airport would take issue. Shannon Airport in Ireland, a major connecting point for Aeroflot, is threatening to cut off landing rights because of the airline's poor safety record.


Gennady Zaitsev, a senior Transport Ministry official, acknowledged the safety problems after the January crash. "Overall, the economic and political situation in the country does impact on safety," he said, adding that the government was unwilling to allocate funds for safety improvements.


He went on to say that Russia's air safety record is about average for the world. This seems a questionable statement at best.


Certainly it is beyond time for the government to investigate and for some heads to roll.