Antonov An-148 / An-158

The An-148 is a modern design with a short and thin record. Up to 7 October 2026 it has had one fatal passenger accident, Saratov Airlines 703 in 2018, which killed all 71 people on board. That is one crash in only about 300,000 passenger flights, so it weighs heavily, and with so few aircraft left the record will not get much longer. You are unlikely to fly on one unless you travel within Russia or to North Korea.

What the An-148 is

The An-148 is a twin-engine regional jet designed by Antonov in Kyiv. It first flew in 2004 and entered service in 2009. It has a high wing, engines in pods under the wing and a sturdy landing gear, so it can use shorter and rougher runways than most regional jets. It seats about 75; the stretched An-158 seats about 99. The cockpit has screens and fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary controls. We could not confirm that it has full envelope protection of the Airbus kind, so it sits with third-generation jets in our methodology.

Only about 45 were built, in Kyiv and at the VASO plant in Voronezh, Russia. Rossiya, part of the Aeroflot group, was the largest early operator. Cuba's Cubana was the main An-158 customer. Today about 15 remain in service, mostly with Russian government and military fleets and a few regional airlines, plus Air Koryo in North Korea.

Saratov Airlines 703

On 11 February 2018, flight 703 took off from Moscow Domodedovo in light snow for Orsk. The aircraft had arrived late, and the crew rushed their preparations. They did not switch on the heating of the three pitot tubes, the probes that measure airspeed. About two and a half minutes after take-off, the speed readings began to disagree. The crew disconnected the autopilot, the aircraft pitched down to about 30 degrees and hit a snowy field near Stepanovskoye. All 65 passengers and 6 crew died.

Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee called it a loss of control caused by the crew's actions with unreliable airspeed from iced pitot tubes. It also listed design points: on the An-148, pitot heating is switched on just before the take-off run, which makes it easy to miss, and some warning messages cannot be cleared. Six warnings were on screen before take-off, three of them about pitot heat. Crews at Saratov Airlines had grown used to taking off with messages showing, the airline had a poor safety culture, and no simulator could train the unreliable-airspeed case.

The other fatal event

On 5 March 2011, an An-148 built for the Myanmar Air Force broke up in flight near Garbuzovo in the Belgorod region during a training flight. It had been allowed to reach 110 km/h above its design limit speed in an emergency descent. All six crew died. It was a pre-delivery test and training flight with no passengers, so it does not count in our passenger rate.

Parts and support

The An-148 depends on Ukraine. Antonov holds the design, and its D-436-148 engines were made by Ukrainian industry. Production stopped as relations between the two countries broke down. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian operators have had no access to the original designer or engine maker. We cannot measure how this affects maintenance from accident data, but it is a reason to treat the type with caution. The Sukhoi Superjet, its Russian rival, faces a similar problem with its French engine partner.

How to tell if you are on one

Flight trackers show the ICAO code A148, or A158 for the stretched version. From outside, look for a high-wing jet with two engines hanging under the wing; the BAe 146 looks similar but has four. If you have a choice on a Russian domestic route, look at the airline's record first; on a type with this few flights, it tells you more.