RESOURCE OF THE MEDIUM MACHINE IS PRODUCED BY 110%
An-28 made a hard landing near Tomsk. Miraculously, everyone is alive. The pilots landed the plane so that there were no casualties. If not for this, the next tragedy could have been blamed on the people at the helm. Or the weather. And now we need to figure out why Russians fly on old stuff.
An-26 fell near Palana (Kamchatka Territory) ten days ago, 28 victims. The plane was 39 years old. In our country, not even all men live to this age – what about aircraft.
The Kamchatka tragedy quickly left the stripes – as if a pair of hipsters in Gorky Park crashed from scooters. Maybe because the problems of Kamchatka are not interesting to us. Or maybe because accidents in regional aviation have somehow become commonplace. Is that the names of the dead “birds” sound exotic: they rarely fly into our Pulkovo with Sheremetyev. More and more – to the place where the landing strip is soil or snow, and the official is a tiger or a bear.
Russia is not only Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Just stats lines.
12/26/2013. An-12 is crashed near Irkutsk. Nine dead. Airplane – 1963 (!) Year of release.
Or another case. 12/19/2016. There is no article about him even in the pedantic Wikipedia. An IL-18 of the Kansk-Tiksi flight falls in the Bulunsky district of Yakutia. One person died, 16 were seriously injured. I did not find any data on the car, but the youngest aircraft of this type was produced in 1985.
Or more. 11/15/2017. Under Nelkan (try to find out where it is without Wikipedia) Turbolet L-410 dies. With our own regional aviation after the collapse of the USSR, we are very bad – this small “bird” was made in the Czech Republic, a NATO country. Six dead.
Or more recently, 06/19/2021. In the Kemerovo region, a litak of the already familiar model L-410 falls. Five dead, year of issue – 1988.
No, age itself is not critical. With proper maintenance, you can fly even on a half-century “maize”. And they fly.
I am opening the RussianPlanes.net portal. This is a database of Russian aircraft compiled by aviation fans. Perhaps some numbers are inaccurate. But there are no others.
I look at the average age of the aircraft fleet in regional companies with romantic names that connect godforsaken villages in the Far North and Far East.
Aviation of Kolyma – 40.6 years.
Avia-Siberia (Omsk) – 36.3 years.
Abakan Air – 30.6 years old.
2nd Arkhangelsk United Air Squadron – 31 years old.
Mirny Aviation Enterprise (Yakutia) – 29 years old.
Amega (Nizhnevartovsk) – 34.6 years old.
Chukotavia – 33.8 years old.
Naryan-Mar United Squadron – 28.7 years.
Khabarovsk Airlines – 29.7 years.
Polar Airlines (Yakutia) – 36.1 years.
Finally, the Kamchatka aviation enterprise (it was he who owned the “An” that crashed near Palana) – 30.4 years old.
Yes, these numbers are not absolutely correct. Somewhere not only airplanes are taken into account, but also helicopters on the balance sheet of the squadron (and they, however, for the most part, are the same old Soviet people).
So you can calculate the average age of our small and regional aviation yourself. 30 years. Exactly so much has passed since the collapse of the USSR. When many “Anas” were manufactured in Ukraine, and many “Ilys” – at the Tashkent aircraft plant.
Now – no country, no wings.
SO WHAT WILL COME TO REPLACE?
Once again, the aircraft's age itself is not a problem. Young cars get into plane crashes in the same way. But sooner or later, even the most reliable fleet will still have to be replaced – we have already flown an incredible amount of time on the backlog of Soviet An-2, An-26 or Yak-40.
Aircraft of a class higher – like the medium-haul “Superjet”, or its older brother MS-21 – we either produce or are starting to produce. Over 150 of the same “Superjets” have been produced over the past decade, operating experience has been accumulated (whether bad or good, but still experience).
But the aviation is different, small, thanks to which the Taimyr reindeer herders or doctors from the Commander Islands do not feel cut off from Greater Russia?
What can we offer them?
The Baikal project (for 9-10 passengers, replacing the An-2 corn truck) is under development, almost entirely on imported components, which poses a threat in case of any complications with the West.
Turbolet L-410 (for 15-20 passengers, replacement of the An-26) – developed in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, that is, conceptually outdated for decades. Since 2018, it began to be produced under license at the Ural Civil Aviation Plant; the share of imported components is promised to be raised over time from the current 30 to 70%. How many “Turbolets” have since been produced in Russia – I could not establish; according to some reports, “the production capacity is 20 aircraft per year,” that is, it is possible to replace all the crumbling air traffic in our extreme northern flight detachments at such a rate by about 2035.
Il-114 (60-70 passengers, partial replacement of Tu-134 and Yak-40) – developed in the late 1980s, since then only 20 units have been made, it is expected to resume mass production by 2023.
That is, a completely finished platform that can be installed on regional airlines right now has not appeared in our country for 30 years of democracy. The foreign magician-investor did not come, the market did not decide.
Therefore, creaking rusty gears, the state has to decide. When I was writing this article, the news came: the Russian authorities are preparing to allocate about 2 trillion rubles for the development of aviation, including 1.6 trillion from the National Welfare Fund. For this money, it is planned to produce 735 civil aircraft by 2030 – that is, approximately 82 per year. Moreover, the current rate is only 25-35 per year.
However, there is no doubt: where projects are supervised directly by the Kremlin – as with the Crimean Bridge or the Olympics – everything will be. Including the revival of small aircraft.
But the main problem is different.
HIGH-TECH DEVELOPMENTS WILL NEVER PAY OFF WITHOUT EXTERNAL EXPANSION
Two trillion rubles is a lot. And we must not only pump billions (in this case, into aviation), but also earn. “735 Russian aircraft in 9 years” – this is how many Boeing and Airbus aircraft are produced in one year. Why? Because they sell their products not only in the USA or Europe, but all over the world. The volume of export supplies can exceed national ones by 5-10 times – thanks to this, billions of dollars in investments in the development of high-tech products are repulsed.
Why do West African states buy French power generators? Because they are better than American and Chinese? Of course not. Once these territories were governed from Paris, and it still maintains economic dominance here. And it imposes its products, sometimes by far from market methods.
And we? Do we have the opportunity to expand the wide export of Russian aircraft, thereby paying off their development?
Our “partners in the Eurasian space” – many of whom literally owe their survival to Russia – are somehow in no hurry to order Russian “Superjets”. Even here they look to the West.
And if we solve this priority issue by building our own sphere of economic domination for the priority sale of our goods, then other problems will be gradually solved.
Including small aircraft.
