Pobeda flies daily from St. Petersburg to Volgograd with flight number DP517. Generally a Boeing 737-800 is used. This was also the case last week, on April 8. The Russian airline carried out the approximately two-hour flight that day with the plane with registration RA-73237.

Although the flight with 189 passengers landed safely, this has repercussions for the Aeroflot subsidiary. Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsiya has ordered an investigation, aviation news channel Aviatorshina reports. The reason: the pilots could not be reached by radio for about 20 minutes.

The pilots took off their headphones.

As the flight approached Moscow while flying overhead, the Pobeda flight dispatcher attempted to contact the pilots. He got no response.

Subsequent repeated attempts to call the crew also failed.

It wasn't until 20 minutes later that the pilots responded to the flight dispatcher. The two pilots took off their headphones and left the speaker off. The captain later explained that the 20-minute loss of radio communication was due to carelessness.

When the co-pilot informed the passengers, he turned off the speaker on his side. The co-pilot did the same.

The captain further explained that he did not notice the silence because he was busy reading a document. When he noticed the error, he immediately contacted us. It was his fault.