Civil aviation: how much money will be spent on new planes for which there is no demand

Victoria Pavlova

Last week, Mikhail Mishustin held a meeting in Voronezh on the development of aircraft manufacturing in Russia. The main conclusions: by 2030, 30% of the aircraft in the fleet of Russia's largest airlines should be domestic, and factories should produce 100 aircraft per year. The plans are simply Napoleonic, because in 2019 the domestic industry mastered 11 aircraft, in 2020 - 12, and in 2021 it was supposed to produce 22 winged aircraft. But even the most optimistic scenarios will not make it possible to cover all the needs of airlines and get rid of imports. There are no and will not be Russian-made long-haul aircraft: the Il-96-400 project was closed last year due to lack of demand. There remain the short-haul SSJ-100, the medium-haul MS-21, the regional Il-114, the Czech-Russian L-410 and the new alternative to the ancient An-2 "maize" - "Baikal". The set is not bad, but they all face a number of problems that will cost the state, which means all people, very expensive.

The MS-21, which received a certificate at the end of last year, which allows it to operate in conditions that exclude frost, attracts the main attention to itself. But, as always, there is a nuance. The aircraft was certified only with the American Pratt & Whitney engine, and the domestic PD-14 will be delivered at best in 2024. The Perm plant Mashinostroitel, where engine parts will be produced, recently received preferential loans from the Industry Development Fund of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation for 844 million rubles to create a production complex. By 2025, the enterprise should produce up to 20-25 sets per year (which will be enough for 10-12 aircraft, respectively). Only the production of engine parts required an investment of 1.3 billion rubles.

But who will operate the MS-21 is still an open question. Rossiya, which is part of the state-owned Aeroflot, should become the base airline. Even the Pobeda low-cost airline, owned by the same Aeroflot, is not going to switch from Boeing to MS-21, let alone the private S7 airline ... For an airline seeking to offer the cheapest tickets, it is extremely important that the equipment is used without interruptions. But presidential aide Igor Levitin admitted problems with after-sales service for domestic equipment, and the main buyer of aircraft, the State Transport Leasing Company (GTLK), requires additional subsidies for flight hours for the MS-21, since the MS-21 will not be able to provide flight time, like foreign competitors - it will last longer in service.

The same problems befell the SSJ-100. Due to the need for constant maintenance, airlines lose a lot of money. Yamal, for example, complained that due to problems with repairs, only 7-8 aircraft out of 15 regularly fly. And unpleasant incidents occur every now and then in flights. On December 15, the flight from Salekhard to Tyumen, which was carried out on the Superjet, was delayed for 8 hours due to a breakdown. Yamal Airlines had to send a reserve board, which could take only 50 people. The rest had to be placed at the expense of the company in a hotel awaiting repairs. A little earlier, on November 30, 2021, the Superjet en route from Nizhnevartovsk to Mineralnye Vody made an emergency landing in Volgograd due to an engine failure. Everything ended well, no one was hurt, but the airline again had to send a backup board to deliver passengers. Driving two planes instead of one is a dubious business.

What will happen next with the SSJ-100 is not known. Now the share of imported components reaches 70%, and by 2024 it should become completely domestic. In fact, it will be a completely different plane. But even in its current form, it has a very unusual economy. According to the head of VTB Leasing, Dmitry Ivanter , the company will not deal with these aircraft, even taking into account subsidies. The market price of the aircraft at 15.9 million dollars is approximately 2 times lower than the purchase price - 33 million dollars. And there is no residual value at all. Nobody wants to pay for the SSJ-100 as a competitor.

Il-114, the first versions of which appeared in the late 80s of the last century, should become an alternative to the obsolete An-24 and imported ATR-72. But when and in what form it will reach mass production is not known. It was expected that it would be certified in 2023, but the accident of the test Il-112V confused all the cards: it has the same engines. Denis Manturov claims that the terms of certification will not change. But how many airlines will want to operate a dangerous aircraft?

The future of local aviation is no less vague. The Czech L-410, which last year received the notoriety of an aircraft prone to crashes, got into the state program. The Czech aircraft of the 60s of the last century received domestic avionics, but deliveries with a modern Russian engine are delayed. And Baikal, which they have been trying to build with regular involvement of state subsidies since the beginning of the 90s, has so far only passed airfield tests and has never taken to the air. What are its characteristics, features and cost of operation is not yet known.

But it is known how much money the state is ready to spend on supporting the aviation industry.

In the next 3 years alone, 122 billion rubles will be allocated under the state program for the development of the aviation industry, and another 112 billion will be allocated separately for R&D. State corporations and air carriers from the National Welfare Fund will receive 279 billion rubles in soft loans at 2.5% for the purchase of domestic equipment. And the total cost of the program of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which provides for the production of 735 aircraft, is estimated at 1.8 trillion rubles.

Citizens of Russia will pay for domestic aircraft with their own money, not only by buying tickets, but also by paying taxes. Whether you fly or not, it doesn't matter, everyone will pay. But there are no guarantees that for this money you will not have to spend hours at airports waiting for a backup flight with a transfer to an imported analogue.