Speaking at a meeting between representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office and Transport Ministry officials, Yury Chaika said over 300 people died in air crashes on Russian airlines in 2006.
"A whole series of recent accidents and air crashes has shown that flight security is extremely poor," Yury Chaika said. "The airline accident rate exceeds last year's indicators."
At least 170 people, including 45 children, were killed in August when a Russian-made Tu-154 jet en route from a Black Sea resort to St. Petersburg came down in stormy weather in eastern Ukraine.
In July, 124 passengers and crew lost their lives when an Airbus crashed upon landing on a domestic flight in Siberia. And pilots have also been forced to make a number of emergency landings. The latest involved a Tu-154, which was forced to touch down in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia earlier this month after an engine failure.
Prosecutors and ministry officials conducted checks of airlines, airports, the Federal Service for Transport Supervision, the Federal Air Transportation Agency, and the Federal Agency for Industry.
Chaika said the use of low-quality or counterfeit airliner parts and the lack of permits at airports and air carriers were among the most serious and widespread violations. The functioning of regulatory bodies was also revealed to be inadequate.
Prosecutors have launched a large-scale probe into the sale of counterfeit parts on the Russian aviation market.
An engineer at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport is under investigation on fraud charges after aviation police seized about 40 forged stamps and seals from suppliers and technical inspection bodies.
Russia's consumer rights watchdog, the Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare, ordered airlines in September to identify their parts suppliers and disclose their supply agreements. The move was coordinated with Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is also the defense minister, who is overseeing the crackdown on airlines.
Chaika said Monday the airport in Elista, in Russia's southern republic of Kalmykia, was closed for lack of operating certificates.
"The growing number of incidents involving air carriers fuels fear in society and promotes a lack of trust in domestic carriers, which is a major blow to Russia's image," the prosecutor general said.
