Those of you who are getting ready to travel to Russia to complete adoptions with newly accredited agencies may want to read a new feature story on the Associated Press wire.

Then again, you may not. It's all about Russian air safety, or more properly, the lack of air safety.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know the basic issues involving aviation in Russia: deregulation, competition--and too many fatal crashes. (Read the previous posts "How Safe Is Russian Air Travel?", "Russia's New Carriers And Safety" and "Checking Out Your Airline In Russia" and the highly educated commentary from Adoption.com member John.)

But the Associated Press raises some issues that I have not seen before, and they are troubling. Like pilots flying with far less training than they need and carriers who fine pilots for using too much fuel. Why's that one a problem? Well, according to the Associated Press, pilots are attempting to land or fly through bad weather to keep their fuel usage low--and crashing in the process. That, the news service says, may have been a factor in the crash of Pulkovo Airlines flight 612 last August. Rather than turn back to avoid a storm, which would have cost him more fuel, the pilot climbed to his aircraft's maximum altitude and it went into a stall and crashed back to earth.

The critics of Russia's airlines who are quoted by the AP also see low pay as a factor in the air safety problems. One puts the average pay at $2,000 a month and says that the highest salaries depend on how much time pilots fly every month, compelling them to spend more time that they should in the cockpit. (According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual earnings of airline pilots, co-pilots, and flight engineers in the U.S. were $129,250 as of May 2004. And the Federal Aviation Administration limits their time in the air to no more than 100 hours a month or 1,000 hours a year.)

As I said at the start, this is not a story you may want to click through to read, because there's not much that you, as a passenger, can do about it. And, not to sound like a cliché, but flying--even in Russia--is still safer than just about any other means of transportation anywhere.