RuAviation

In the summer of 2022, the media reported that the Aviacor plant in Samara was preparing for large-scale serial production of new medium-haul aircraft under the working name D-70. These aircraft were to replace in Russian airlines the French-Italian turboprop aircraft ATR 72, which was considered as a prototype of the new Russian model.

This was announced by the Governor of the Samara region Dmitry Azarov during the XV St Petersburg International Economic Forum. “I want the enterprise to produce aircraft again. We understand what kind of aircrafts, but it is too early to talk about it… It is not a quick process… I hope that we will be able to do a lot to revive in full the production of aircrafts on the Samara land,” – he said.

Dmitry Azarov did not specify what kind of aircraft we may be talking about. However, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Samara region said that Aviacor was considering the possibility of producing an alternative regional aircraft with full Russian localisation, including the manufacture of all components. Work is ongoing, the working name of the aircraft is D-70, the regional industry ministry said at the time.

In mid-March 2022, the plant became the largest contractor of the Ural Civil Aviation Plant in the creation of the 44-seat Ladoga aircraft (TVRS-44). Samara is to produce four fuselages for testing and certification of the new aircraft. And while the comprehensive programme for the development of the Russian aviation industry includes the Ladoga, the aircraft with the working name D-70 is not mentioned in it.

In this connection, as well as with the need to concentrate all its forces and resources on the production of the Ladoga aircraft, the project for the construction of the D-70 aircraft at the Aviacor plant has been postponed indefinitely.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Samara Region told Samarskoye Obozrenie that the company is currently involved in the construction of the new Russian passenger aircraft TVRS-44 Ladoga, and “due to the heavy workload, application work on the D-70 has been postponed for the time being”.

The Aviacor plant is part of the Russian Machines holding company, controlled by Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element group. Aviacor’s core competences include aircraft construction, overhaul and maintenance of various types of aircraft, and component production. In early 2015, in accordance with the minutes of a meeting with First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin held on 10 October 2014, UAC and ODK prepared a business plan to organise serial production of the IL-114-300 aircraft at the Aviacor-Aviation Plant’s industrial site.

It required at least five years and 10-12 billion roubles of investments to master the production of a new machine for the enterprise. However, by the end of the summer of the same year, the Ministry of Industry and Trade had already excluded the Samara aircraft building enterprise from the list of plants where it was planned to organise serial production of the IL-114-300. When asked by MK in Samara about Aviacor’s prospects, Sergei Bezrukov, Minister of Industry and Technology of the Samara Region, noted that the verdict of the federal Ministry of Industry and Trade was largely predetermined by the need to concentrate budgetary resources on the state programme to support UAC, which does not include Aviacor.