Summary

  • Aeroflot cancels Superjets & Tu-214s to buy more MC-21s.
  • The MC-21 delays redesigns for domestic parts, faces industry hurdles.
  • Aeroflot aims to transform all 339 aircraft orders into the MC-21.

Aeroflot has announced that it wants to cancel the orders for the 89 Superjet 100s and the 40 Tu-214s. Instead, it plans to increase its order from 270 to 339 MC-21s. All three jets are domestically produced Russian jets, and Russia is now trying to substitute sanctioned imported Western parts for domestic components.

Sanctions on Russia’s aviation industry since the Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine have hit the Russian aviation industry hard. The MC-21 was heralded as the Russian answer to the Boeing 737. However, with the aircraft being redesigned with domestic engines and other parts, it is now expected to be almost 6 tons overweight, late, and have reduced range.

Aeroflot cancels Superjets & Tu-214s & buys MC-21s

According to the Russian news website Kommersant, Aeroflot plans to purchase both the MC-21-300 and the shortened MC-21-200 variants. The mix of those two variants is unclear. The head of Aeroflot, Sergei Alexandrovsky, stated, “Given that the deadlines are moving further to the right, we carefully looked at the agreement with the manufacturer. We are talking about transforming all 339 aircraft into MC-21.

Irkut MC-21-300/MS-21 test aircraft in the sky

Photo: Fasttailwind | Shutterstock

Previously, Aeroflot had planned to lease 210 MC-21s, 89 Superjets, and 40 Tu-214s (although, there weren’t any firm contracts for the Tu-214 as Aeroflot wanted to see that the aircraft cabin was upgraded first). Aeroflot was to be a prime buyer of the once-touted Superjet. Given that exports seem unlikely given the current sanctions, it is unclear what the future of the jet is now.

While no one should discount Russia’s ability to produce commercial jets, the industry is facing a Herculean task. Not only is the industry racing to replace Western parts (like engines and avionics) with domestic parts, but it is also trying to do it in the middle of a major war where the commercial industry is competing against the military industry for limited resources.

According to reporting by Kommersant, 12 MC-21 jets are “in varying degrees of readiness.” However, it is unclear just how ‘ready’ these jets are given that Kommersant also reported Rostec as clarifying that the “final appearance of the aircraft will be determined only in the second half of 2024.” Even so, the Kommersant reports that the MC-21 is the most popular size and would allow the airline to reduce its operating costs relative to the other available aircraft.

Related

Ordered By Aeroflot: 5 Fast Facts About The Tupolev Tu-214

Russia is planning to produce 70 commercial passenger Tu-214s in the coming years, although they are currently mostly used for government purposes.

An aviation industry in crisis

Russia announced its plans in December 2023 to produce over 1,000 domestic jets by 2030. This was recently trimmed to a little less than 1,000. It is unclear if Aeroflot’s move to replace 129 Superjets and Tu-214s with MC-21s will further impact the production outlook.

The first MC-21 deliveries have been pushed back to the fourth quarter of 2025. The deliveries of the first MC-21s had been planned for the end of 2024, while the first Superjets had been planned for the end of 2023.

Several Aeroflot Sukhoi Superjet 100s parked side by side.

Photo: Media_works | Shutterstock

270 MC-21s are planned to be built by 2030, and it is unclear if this target will be raised or not. However, Kommersant cited unnamed sources in the Russian aviation industry as indicating that these figures are unrealistic. Regardless of production number, Kommersant stated that Aeroflot’s competitors will not receive the MC-21 before 2030.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *