No plane delivered by Kazan Aviation Plant in 2022
No plane in 2022
Kazan Aviation Plant, a branch of Tupolev PJSC, has contracts to build four Tu-214 planes for UVT Aero airline from Tatarstan signed according to the Tatarstan president’s decision, Realnoe Vremya’s sources said. According to them, these direct contracts are funded by extrabudgetary sources. The plane delivery deadlines aren’t defined.
There aren’t other contracts to build and supply Tu-214 planes for Russian airlines, representatives of the Kazan plant confirmed. They say the signing of agreements is slowed down for two reasons. Firstly, MS-21 and Superjet 100 remain a priority for the federal authorities, huge money is allocated to substitute imports of their components.
Secondly, the discussion of the creation of a public leasing company through which the construction of planes could start is dragged on.
“Let’s say, Aeroflot doesn’t have to invest money in the engineering and wait for its end for several years. It just needs to buy ready equipment, and either a leasing company or the state has to engineer,” the newspaper’s source in the enterprise thinks.
According to this source, last year, Kazan Aviation Plant, a branch of Tupolev PJSC, didn’t deliver either military or civil plane to its clients.
The problem of the absence of contracts on the engineering of civil aircraft was first raised by parliamentarians last October. Then Tatarstan State Council deputy Ilshat Aminov asked when a federal client of the Tu-214 engineering programme would appear because the republic was constantly saving it, the delivery deadlines and who would get it. The Tatarstan economy minister couldn’t provide a specific answer.
Putin: “Why are you playing around here?”
President of Russia Vladimir Putin also paid attention to the problem recently by criticising the job done to place orders of aircraft in enterprises. He says that the plants don’t yet have orders.
“Enterprises don’t have contracts, directors told me. Really, why are you playing around here? When will there be contracts? This is what I am talking about. Plant directors tell me: ‘There are no contracts,’ while you have everything equalised,” Vladimir Putin spoke out.
The head of the country tasked Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov with elaborating the issue of aircraft supply with the Defence Ministry to understand how many civil and military planes were needed.
“Some enterprises still don’t have any orders... It’s long. It’s too long. Enterprises need to understand their prospects, orders, they need to hire workforce, keep and expand production capacities, you know? They need to understand how many military and civil aircraft will be ordered. They don’t have an order even for 2023,” Putin addressed Manturov.
It was said earlier that the Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Plant delivered two Tu-160M strategic missile carriers, they were handed over to militaries for flight testing. The Tu-160M strategic bomber reproduction programme kicked off at the Kazan Aviation Plant according to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s decree long before the start of the special military operation.