Regardless of who is to blame for the death of Total's boss at the Moscow airport favored by President Vladimir Putin, it reinforces an indisputable fact: Russia's air-safety record is dreadful and the wave of crashes is not abating.
Numerous official investigations and a crackdown in recent years have done nothing to raise Russia from near the bottom of the global league, largely due to weak regulation and the effects of sky-high alcohol consumption.
Only a few hours after the private jet of Christophe de Margerie hit a snow plow on take off from Vnukovo Airport, fingers were already being pointed.
Russian investigators accused the snow-plow's driver of being drunk, saying they were also examining the actions of air traffic controllers and the flight crew.
The snow-plow driver rejected the allegations. "He considers himself guiltless as he followed all the instructions from the dispatcher," his lawyer Alexander Karabanov told Reuters. "Relatives are afraid that the airport authorities are just trying to make him ultimately responsible to avoid billions in lawsuits which are for sure to follow."
Nevertheless, no one denies the plow drove onto a runway into the path of the jet, killing de Margerie, chief executive of the fourth largest Western oil company, and three crew in the crash around midnight on Monday.
"This is a glaring fact and I think this will have big repercussions - and that's the last thing Russia wants,"Alexander Romanov, an air safety expert, told Reuters.
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