The ATO has revealed the reasons for Aeroflot's desire to receive only MS-21 aircraft
Sberbank and Gazprom Neft consultants are conducting an audit of the civil division of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) after the postponement of the production of Russian aircraft. This is reported by Kommersant. The audit is carried out at the factories of the UAC, where new civil aircraft are produced, including the Tu-214. In 2024, the expected number of Tu-214 aircraft produced in Kazan was reduced from 7 to 1 unit. In 2025— up to 4 instead of the estimated ten.
The largest Russian air carrier, Aeroflot Group, wants to transfer its largest—ever order for Russian aircraft exclusively to narrow-body MC-21 aircraft, according to the publication of the Air Transport Review (ATO).
"We are talking about transforming all 339 aircraft into MS-21," the ATO quoted Aeroflot CEO Sergei Alexandrovsky as saying in an interview with Rossiya 24 TV channel at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in early June.
As you know, this large order placed by the Aeroflot Group in the fall of 2022 included 89 SJ-100 regional jet aircraft, 210 MC-21 medium-haul and 40 more narrow-body Tu-214. The following year, 18 MC-21-310, 34 SJ-100 and 11 Tu-214 from this agreement were transferred to a firm order.
The start of deliveries of import-substituted SJ-100s was expected at the end of 2023, and the first MS-21s were to arrive at the airline in December 2024. But due to difficulties with the development of Russian PD-8 engines for the SJ-100, the deadline for the start of deliveries of the last UAC was shifted to 2026. Certification tests of the import-substituted version, but not with Russian engines, started only on June 10 and will last until the end of 2025.
According to the assurances of the UAC, the MS-21 will be available a year earlier. According to the airline, the target date for the start of deliveries of the MS-21 is now the 4th quarter of 2025. Therefore, the choice of Aeroflot looks logical, the author of the publication in the ATO believes, — the airline needs new cargo capacities to maintain the volume of traffic. According to the Aeroflot Group, due to the delay in the delivery of Russian aircraft, it will miss one million passengers in 2024 and about four million more in 2025. Four million passengers is a lot, almost 8.5 percent of the group's total traffic for 2023.
As a result, Aeroflot will have to compensate for this falling traffic by intensive operation of the existing fleet." However, under the conditions of Western sanctions, which prohibit the import of aviation spare parts to Russia, an increase in the flight time of Western aircraft, which now form the basis of the Aeroflot fleet, may lead to a faster depletion of their resource. Therefore, it is important for the group to begin the transition to modern domestic aircraft as soon as possible, the publication emphasizes.
It is the narrow-body medium-haul aircraft of Western production that form the basis of the fleet of the Aeroflot Group. The transition to modern MS-21s will allow to unify the fleet, which will reduce the cost of operation, maintenance of aircraft and training of crews for them. Therefore, the rejection of the Tu-214 is understandable. Firstly, this is an additional type of aircraft for the group's fleet. Secondly, he also has difficulties with import substitution, so the timing of the start of deliveries may shift. Initially, this aircraft was positioned as completely Russian, but it soon became clear that about 13 percent of the equipment, including avionics components and evacuation ladders, needed to be replaced on it. No such aircraft has been released yet.
The pace of deliveries may also become a problem: the current capabilities of the Kazan Aircraft Factory are designed to produce one or two Tu-214 per year. Recall that back in 2005, Transaero Airlines signed a contract for the purchase of ten Tu-214, but as a result, the United Aircraft Corporation delivered only three aircraft from April 2007 to October 2009, after which it announced the closure of the program in 2010.
Now, for the planned increase in production to 17 aircraft in 2027, the company will need not only an additional workshop, the construction of which began only in November 2023, but also an increase in the pace of deliveries from suppliers of components and subsystems for this model.
The MS-21 assembly plant is immediately created for production volumes of over 30 aircraft per year with the prospect of expansion to 72 aircraft.
In addition, Aeroflot has not been able to agree with the UAC on the release of a version of the Tu-214 with a two-member crew, as on the MS-21 and Western aircraft. Now, in addition to the two pilots, a flight engineer is flying in the cockpit of the Tu-214, who takes over control of some of the aircraft's systems. The training and use of a third crew member will require additional costs from the carrier. In addition, there is no full-fledged flight engineer training system for this type in Russia, since only 15 Tu-204/214 aircraft are currently in operation.
The outdated ideology of the cabin with a flight engineer is a consequence of the advanced age of the Tu-214. The Tu-204/214 family was developed more than 30 years ago — in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the same time, the MC-21 was created in the 2010s simultaneously with the latest models of narrow-body airliners — Boeing 737MAX and Airbus A320neo.
Thus, the Air Transport Review states that Aeroflot's mega-order for 339 newest MC—21s is an incentive for the entire domestic aviation industry and an opportunity to move to a new higher quality level with the prospect of supplies to the markets of friendly countries. The vacant slots for the supply of SJ-100 and Tu-214 can be transferred to other domestic air carriers, which will also need to update their flight fleets. Moreover, throughout the history of the passenger Tu-204/214, foreign operators have never had a real interest in the aircraft, there were single deliveries to North Korea and Cuba, the ATO sums up.
