MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia’s largest plane builder announced a shake-up in its management yesterday..
Moscow plans to build more than 600 planes by 2030 to replace ageing Boeing and Airbus models, but it is not clear how many it has built or to what extent it has been able to scale up production.
Russia is no longer able to properly service or import new Western aircraft due to sanctions, with half the country’s Airbus neo fleet grounded due to issues repairing engines, according to the Kommersant newspaper.
The state-owned United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) said it was taking over managerial roles at subsidiaries Yakovlev and Tupolev, citing the need to “launch serial production of domestic civil airliners” in an “unprecedentedly short period of time”.
Both companies – which were merged into UAC on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s orders – manufacturer civilian aircraft.
“Andrey Boginsky, the CEO of Yakovlev, and Konstantin Timofeev, Managing Director of Tupolev, are leaving their posts,” UAC said in a statement.
The Kommersant newspaper reported that Boginsky had been fired over the “failure of the civil aviation programme”, quoting a source, although a second source cited by the paper refuted this.
The government has pledged to spend over USD2.7 billion to build and develop homegrown aircraft like the Sukhoi Superjet and UAC-built MC-21.
But the rollout of the MC-21 – a narrow-body aircraft comparable to the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 – has been delayed several times and is not expected to enter service until at least next year. The Sukhoi Superjet has also faced problems.
On Sunday, more than 90 passengers and crew were evacuated from a Superjet 100 operated by Russia’s Azimuth Airlines after one of its engines caught fire while landing at an airport in southern Turkiye.
