Life without Russia: The dying convulsions of the Ukrainian “Antonov”
Ukrainian experts no longer believe in the revival of the Ukrainian aviation industry.
The Kiev online newspaper “Strana” writes about this in material, dedicated to the problems of the Antonov State Enterprise.
It is noted that the Ukroboronprom concern, which has included the enterprise since 2015, has announced a marketing plan, according to which “in the next five years, Antonov should produce at least 70 aircraft.
“I’m not sure that Antonov will be able to get out of the hole in which the domestic aircraft industry finds itself. There is no serial production of aircraft, the industrial cluster that included the enterprise has been destroyed. And no marketing plans will help here,” Gennady Ryabtsev, a leading specialist at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, commented on the situation.
The new head of the aircraft plant, Alexander Krivokon, admitted that the main problem of the enterprise is the lack of serial production of aircraft, and the unresolved issue of replacing Russian components prevents the establishment of it, since Ukrainian aircraft industry enterprises after 2014 forbidden to cooperate with Russian manufacturers.
The share of Russian spare parts in Ukrainian aircraft reached 50-60 percent.
According to Ukroboronprom, only the AN-178 was able to abandon Russian spare parts, but for all other models the situation is less optimistic. Thus, today, 10 unfinished AN-148 and AN-158, in which the share of Russian components was up to 50 percent, are collecting dust in Antonov’s warehouses.
At the same time, experts interviewed by the publication believe that information about Antonov's attempts to create a joint venture in Belarus indicates that the Ukrainian enterprise wants to gain access to Russian spare parts in this way.
“The fact is that a complete replacement of Russian components in the AN-148 and 158 (and now, in particular, the option with Canadian units is being considered) is, in fact, the creation of other aircraft models that need to be certified in a new way. This will not take 1-2 years, it will take many years,” says Ryabtsev.
Antonov is also being forced to work on the “Russian version” by failures in the market of Saudi Arabia, with which they agreed to cooperate in 2015. It was planned that by 2017 at least one AN-132 would be ready.
“In the future, Saudi Arabia was supposed to order 300 of these aircraft, 40% at our facilities, the rest at the Arab plant. But so far only the AN-132 demonstrator is ready and, apparently, further contracts are postponed,” Vyacheslav Konovalov, a representative of the Europatrol company, which studies the aviation and transport markets, told Strana.
“There are no ready-made cars that you can buy. Nobody needs drawings now, they need goods. And without investments in Antonov there won’t be one,” Gennady Ryabtsev is convinced.
In these conditions, a plan for the privatization of Antonov is being prepared.
“Potential buyers may be interested in Antonov Airlines and existing production sites, or rather, the huge tracts of land in Kyiv that they own,” Alexander Lanetsky, director of Friendly Avia Support, told the publication.
Read also: Poroshenko ruined the famous aircraft factory "Antonov".
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