The issue of overcoming “air sanctions” and replenishing the fleet of airlines is one of the most urgent, especially before the summer tourist season. The deputies optimistically promise to “restart” the production of domestic aircraft from 2024, but for now, airlines and production are looking for ways to circumvent sanctions, one of which was the restoration of the airworthiness of mothballed domestic equipment.
Plans for a “restart” were announced in an interview with URA.RU by Denis Kravchenko, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy. He noted that already from 2024, Russia will begin mass production and the transition to flights on domestic aircraft. “Russia has its own aeronautical engineering school and competence centers for the creation of aircraft developed by Soviet designers, and in recent years modified to modern standards. Today, based on the experience of creating new MC-21-300 and SSJ-100 aircraft, we understand how to restructure the production of liners, making new domestic competitive aircraft based on proven aircraft,” the deputy said.
Also, Mr. Kravchenko named the first specifics – in his words, the United Aviation Corporation has already announced that it will produce 20 Tu-214 passenger aircraft and increase the pace of production of long-haul Il-96. “According to preliminary estimates, with intensive and well-coordinated work in 2024, we will be able to own all of the listed aircraft. Then the serial production of boards should be established,” the deputy said.
In the meantime, aviation experts are counting on the “grounded” stocks of Russian-made airliners. In particular, Ilyushin Finance Co. declared their immediate task to restore the airworthiness of the Tu-204, Il-96 and An-148 aircraft.
Experts roughly calculated the number of aircraft to be restored – the scale, I must say, is not very impressive. According to Frequent Flyers, only six An-148s were built for Rossiya Airlines in 2009-2012. An unpleasant detail is that this particular liner crashed in the Moscow region at the beginning of 2018, after which the operation of this type was suspended. The remaining aircraft are mothballed and are in storage. The Angara airline also has several An-148s in storage. Tu-204 experts counted 8 aircraft, and at least until 2018, at least some of them flew with the Red Wings airline. With the Il-96, the situation is slightly better – they were read by about 70 boards, and until 2014 they were operated by Aeroflot, but also removed them from the fleet due to low commercial efficiency.
As for the most famous Russian development – “Superjet” – then, we recall, it was not without problems here. According to RBC, IrAero CEO Yuri Lapin warned Irkutsk Region Governor Igor Kobzev that airlines operating Superjets would not be able to repair and maintain the technical suitability of Russian-French SaM146 engines. Moreover, they promise to “stop the park” “in the short term.” Read more here.
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