Sukhoi Superjet 100. Photo: Moscow Aviation Institute
Russia has built just seven passenger aircraft since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, BBC News Russian reported on Thursday, far short of a government plan to build 108.
The Air Industry Development Program, approved by the Russian government in June 2022, initially outlined a plan to build a total of 108 passenger planes by the end of 2024, but the start date for the production of several plane models was later moved to between 2025 and 2028, the BBC wrote.
Despite Vladimir Putin’s repeated claims that Western sanctions are in fact good for the development of Russian industry as a whole, the restrictions introduced since the start of the war in Ukraine have left the aviation industry “on the brink of failure”, the BBC added.
Russia has built seven Sukhoi Superjet 100 passenger planes since 2022, using components it stockpiled before the start of the war, as well as two prototypes — Il-96-400M and Il-114 — used in test flights, the BBC estimated, using data from Russian Planes, an unofficial register of Russian aircraft, which it cross-checked with media reports and other unofficial sources, as Russia’s federal aviation authority Rosaviatsia no longer publishes its civil aviation register.
The government-approved production plan was simply an “imitation of activity” meant to “calm government nerves” and was never regarded as a working plan, a source in the Russian aviation industry told BBC News Russian.
As Russia continues to grapple with Western sanctions, the number of safety incidents involving passenger planes has risen by 30% in 2024 compared to last year, raising worries about flight safety amid inadequate aircraft maintenance, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported earlier this month.
Russia is currently attempting to circumvent sanctions by smuggling spare parts into the country and by buying up aviation software on the black market, despite neither option being “completely reliable or completely safe”, Alexander Lanetsky, CEO of civil aviation consultancy Friendly Avia Support, told Novaya Gazeta Europe.
