smacDC-10 wrote:I don't understand why some of the contributers here can't wake up and acknowledge that Russian aircraft crash on a regular basis? I don't care what this thing looks like or that it is a knock off of a boeing/airbus. I lived in Russia and witnessed first hand a very backwards system thats horribly corrupt. My God, baggage handlers in that country will take bribes and load cargo without telling the pilots! I will only fly Western built aircraft were the standards are proven to be high.
I cannot approve or disapprove your statement about Russian built aircraft to crash more often than Western built Aircraft (but I have my doubts), because I have not seen a comparable and reliable statistic on this. By the way, I guess the majority of planes you have in mind are not really "Russian" built, but "Soviet built", but that is another story ...
However, you give the answer to the probelm yourself in your post

: It is not the planes (if it is at all

), it is the conditions under which they are operated, if baggage handlers load cargo for bribes without telling (I have no doubts about that

), I do not want to know what technicians or pilots or controllers or ... do

). If these planes would be operated in the EU with the European safety standards I would expect much much less problems.
I would have no problem to fly a modern, new SSJ with B.Air. On the contrary I have sometimes my doubts if I board one of those reliable B737's which you can meet everywhere in Europe (LH, B.Air, Aegean, AirOne, ...) which already show their age and you can than check the registration and find out they were built in the early 80s or so, hm ...
I fully agree on this point with fly4hours.be: ask any ordinary passenger tomorrow on the first Avro flight "which company did built this plane"? They will have no idea ... Airbus and Boeing is know by everybody, but who knows Embraer, Bombardier, BAe, Fokker, etcetera, etcetera ??
They do not care about this. They trust an airline, not a specific plane. Many pax will not even be able to say if any given plane is a B737 or an A319 if they sit inside and you take the card with the security instructions away on which the aircraft type is printed

.
On the first approach "Russian made" will probably be followed by a disucssion, but if more airlines will operate these planes, nobody will care anymore.