In part one of this series of posts on Russian air safety, I looked at Aeroflot then and now.

But Aeroflot is just one part of the Russian aviation world these days. When the carrier was reorganized after the breakup of the Soviet Union, hundreds of small regional carriers were created, although there's been some consolidation since. The current list of air carriers operating in Russia on Wikipedia has 99 carriers listed, a number that includes many of the airlines now operating there, but not all.

Here's their safety record: According to AirSAfe.com, a Web site started by a former Boeing safety analyst, there had been 28 crashes involving airlines of the former Soviet Union since 1990.

That number was raised to 29 on Saturday March 17, when a Tu-134 belonging to UTAir crashed in the southern Russian city of Samara, killing six people. There had been 50 passengers and seven crew members on board, and 21 of them were reported to have been hospitalized. Though an investigation is underway, the crash has so far been blamed on a sudden shift in weather. But according to the St. Petersburg Times, European air safety officials had just days earlier banned UTAir, which is based in the Siberian city of Tyumen, from flying to Europe for safety reasons.

Many of these regional carriers are flying planes they inherited from Aeroflot. The UTAir plane that crashed was an older model Tupolev. Last July, a Tupolev operated by Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise crashed in eastern Ukraine, killing 170. This February, Aeroflot said that it will be pulling all Tu-134s and the newer Tu-154s from its fleet by January of next year. The Tu-134s were first made in 1967.

But new planes have been involved in Russian crashes too: In May 2006, an Airbus A329 operated by Armenian Airlines crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people. Two months later, another Airbus flown by a carrier called S7 slid off a runway in Irkutsk, killing 125 people.

Some 400 people died in airplane crashes in Russia in 2006, which caused Russia's Prosecutor General to blast the airlines' safety and maintenance procedures. One chilling factor he pointed out: Some carriers have been using counterfeit spare parts.

Next up: How to check out a Russian airline before you fly.

--Part One: How Safe Is Russian Air Travel?
--Part Three: Checking Out Your Airline In Russia