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Eastern Europe
February 22, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 19
Russia's civil aviation projects in trouble
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The state gathered together many of its civil avia- tion assets in the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), which attempted to capitalise on Russia’s long standing strength in the military aviation sector by building several different commercial planes.
However, it appears now that UAC has run out of money. The UAC is not in a good shape and needs RUB240bn–RUB250bn ($3.6bn-$3.8bn) of addition- al funds, Sergei Chemezov, CEO of UAC’s parent company Rostec, told reporters on February 18.
“We are now conducting an audit of the company, and it does not look well frankly speaking...It needs about RUB240bn–RUB250bn of additional funds. The money should go on development, on creation of new products, on [passenger airliner] MC-21,
on upgrades of existing plants. This is probably the reason for us to rearrange and split the civil and the military divisions so that we don’t put our civil production under the fire of sanctions,” he said.
The production of the newly created MC-21 me- dium-range aircraft has been postponed to late 2020 as the US stopped supplies of composite materials for the wings, Chemezov added.
“As the US side has suspended supplies of com- posite materials, we will shift to Russia-made materials. We have necessary solutions and Rus- sian partners, including [state nuclear company] Rosatom. Tests are being finalised now so the launch of mass production of MC-21 has been delayed... to late 2020,” he said.
Russia has been hoping to break into the mid- range carrier market and challenge the incum- bents Boeing and Airbus, but the Russian projects have been plagued with problems.
In January, Kommersant reported that US sanc- tions against a composite materials producer belonging to UAC and a Rostec company stopped imports of materials for the MC-21 plane’s wings from Japan and the US.
Russia’s other mid-range jet project, the Sukhoi Su- per Jet 100 (SSJ100), has also run aground. SSJ100 is further advanced and has actually made sales, but the planes have been dogged by technical problems.
In November last year the owner Civil Aircraft got into hot water with the State Transport Leasing Company (GTLK), its largest customer, over delayed supplies of the medium-distance SSJ100 jets. GTLK filed three lawsuits in the Moscow Arbitrage court.
This week Ireland’s CityJet, the only European company to have bought the jet, reportedly aban- doned the plans after a failure to choose a busi- ness model to ensure their effective use, Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said on Febru- ary 18. Vedomosti reported that CityJet is return- ing seven jets it has already received.
“The main problem here is that they have unfortu- nately failed to choose a good business model to use the plane. Their business model turned out to be inefficient.”
But Russia’s Sukhoi Civil Aircraft denied Vedomosti’s report.
“Information about airline CityJet returning SSJ100 planes to the owner is not true. Currently, CityJet airline is reviewing its business model, in this connection, Sukhoi Civil Aircraft and CityJet are actively cooperating to solve this issue in the part of SSJ100,” Sukhoi Civil Aircraft said in a statement.