Air Astana pilots awarded with Hugh Gordon-Berge Award

The Honorable Company of Air Pilots (London) is one of the most famous City of London guilds established in 1929 to promote high standards of flight safety.

The Honorable Company of Air Pilots (London) is one of the most famous City of London guilds established in 1929 to promote high standards of flight safety. Every year it holds an awards ceremony for outstanding service to aviation, at the ancient Guidhall in the heart of London's old city. These awards are generally given to aviators from Britain and other Commonwealth countries.

But 2022 was different. At this year's dinner, the names Captain Vyacheslav Auezov, First Officer Baurzhan Karasholakov, and First Officer Sergey Sokolov, all local pilots of Air Astana, featured on the first page of the Awards List.

They were awarded the Hugh Gordon-Burge Memorial Award, for outstanding behaviour, courage, and action, for saving their aircraft and colleagues, on 11 November 2018. On that day they were returning an Embraer 190 from a C-check performed by an outside maintenance organisation in Lisbon, Portugal.

However after take-off, the aircraft became uncontrollable due to the maintenance organisation having incorrectly installed new flight control wiring during the C-check. This made the aircraft virtually uncontrollable. But, Vyacheslav, Baurzhan, and Sergey, after a dramatic sequence of events which included high-speed dives and gyrations, putting themselves and the aircraft under stress up to 5 times Gravitational Pull (5 Gs, the same as a Typhoon Fighter in combat), they were able to diagnose the problem, partially regain control, and land the aircraft at Beja Portuguese Airforce Base in southeast Portugal.

Peter Foster Air Astana President and CEO commented: “Their skill and courage, and rigorous application of their high quality training, is now recognised at the highest levels of the aviation world. Air Astana is immensely proud of them.”