The need to replace the An-2 is long overdue. As a matter of fact, it is the basis for a significant part of all intra-regional passenger and cargo transportations, as well as air communication with hard-to-reach and remote settlements in Siberia and the Far East. As an example: On 14 August 2024, for the first time in 30 years, an AN-2 performed a regular passenger flight from the Omsk airport to the village of Ust-Ishim. Now residents of the settlement will need only two hours instead of 12 hours by bus to get to the regional centre.
To support light passenger aviation and regional airlines in the Siberian Research Institute of Aviation named after Chaplygin (SibNIA, Novosibirsk) in October 2010 began design work on An-2 remotorisation. The main task of the modernisation was to switch from aviation gasoline B-91 and its analogues to aviation paraffin TS-1, due to which a significant reduction in operating costs was obtained. It was also required to increase the engine overhaul life, to provide autonomy and independence from ground services during maintenance and preparation of the aircraft for flight, to improve temperature conditions in the cabin and cockpit. At the same time, the basic qualities of the basic machine were to be preserved.
Due to the lack of a modern economical and light engine in Russia, SibNIA decided to install a Honeywell TRE-331-12 turboprop engine of 1100 hp on the An-2 instead of the piston ASH-62IR. The aircraft was designated TVS-2MS. In 2011, LLC Rusaviaprom was established in Novosibirsk specifically to implement the An-2 aircraft remotorisation project. By a joint decision of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Transport of Russia, the company was appointed the manufacturer of the TVS-2MS aircraft in the territory of the Russian Federation.
When comparing the An-2 and TVS-2MS pilots, first of all, note the thrust capacity of the remotorised machine. This is especially noticeable at high temperatures, when the thrust of the ASh-62IR engine drops significantly. On TVS-2MS engine in the heat works without loss of power, but the problem is that TRE-331-12 is an American engine, and since the spring of 2022, the official supply of imported aircraft components for Russian civil aviation stopped and will not resume in the foreseeable future.
Taking into account the absence of a domestic engine with similar characteristics, LLC Rusaviaprom initiated a project to develop a Russian turboprop engine by reverse engineering method – reverse engineering. Development of such a turboprop engine in Russia will give a serious boost to aviation – both passenger and aerobatic aircraft, both civil and military, as well as UAVs. This class of engine is now sorely lacking in the Russian Federation.
Turboprop engine for TVS-2MS will be created by reverse engineering method
The new flagship of light aviation should be the LMS-901 Baikal aircraft developed at the design bureau of the Ural Civil Aviation Plant. One prototype has been produced, but it is also equipped with an imported General Electric H80-200 propulsion system, and until the domestic VK-800SM turboprop engine is ready, this aircraft will not appear on local lines. However, even this is not its main problem. There are two of them – the timing and the cost of the machine for airlines.
Yury Trutnev, Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian President in the Far Eastern Federal District, spoke about the timing. ‘The An-2 aircraft was created for two years: On 6 March 1946 a design bureau was established at the Novosibirsk Aviation Plant, and on 31 August 1947 the plane first took to the skies, and in August 1948 it was adopted for service by the Soviet Union’s aviation, all the work took two years. And now it looks like this: we have been working on the Baikal aircraft since 2018, and colleagues say that it will go into production at best in early 2024. This means that in 75 years we have learned to work worse than in the Soviet Union, three times worse, and this in a situation where, on the contrary, we need to work faster and more intensively,’ Trutnev said at a meeting on 20 October 2022 in Khabarovsk.
But the aircraft did not go into production in 2024. UZGA does not give information about work on either the VK-800SM engine or the LMS-901 aircraft. In its version of May 17, 2024, the Comprehensive Development Programme for the aviation industry envisages the production of five Baikal aircraft in 2025. At the same time, in early April 2023, Sergey Vakushin, General Designer of the Engines Division of UZGA, said that by the end of 2023, the VK-800SM should enter flight testing as part of the Yak-40LL flying laboratory in SibNIA, and the first flight of the Baikal aircraft with the VK-800SM engine is scheduled for the third quarter of 2024. LMS-901 certification is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025.
It is not a problem for UZGA to build five airframes of the LMS-901 aircraft, but they will stand in the workshops of the plant until the VK-800SM is fully ready for safe operation on the aircraft with passengers. Given that the engine has not yet been submitted for certification testing, the timing of the start of commercial operation of the Baikals is guaranteed to be disrupted once again.
As for the cost of the aircraft for operators, in 2019 the Ministry of Industry and Trade set a task for UZGA to meet 120 million rubles. The same price of ‘Baikal’ was included in the terms of reference for the development of the aircraft and it should not exceed 120 million rubles in 2020 prices, the cost of a flight hour without taking into account leasing – 40 thousand rubles.
On 10 January 2021, in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Denis Manturov specified that the contract fixed the cost of a flight hour for the Baikal aircraft at 30 thousand rubles, and the aircraft should be cheaper than the Cessna Caravan and Kodiak: 100-120 million rubles against 170 million and 165 million respectively.
However, it is not possible to stay within these price limits. In the summer of 2023, it became known that the approximate base cost of the aircraft will be 178 million rubles. But already in autumn, at the exhibition-forum ‘Russia’, the head of the Ministry of Eastern Development Alexei Chekunkov told TASS that the base cost of the aircraft LMS-901 ‘Baikal’ will be more than 200 million rubles, and taking into account leasing payments, the full cost may be slightly higher than this amount.
On 19 August 2024, the RBC website published an article from which it follows that in the first year of the expected delivery (2025) the price of the aircraft will already be 455 million rubles, which exceeds the cost of the technical specification and the development contract by 3.8 times. At the same time, the State Transport Leasing Company (GTLC) informed potential operators that starting from 2025 the cost of the aircraft will increase every year by about 4% and by 2032 will amount to 587 million rubles. GTLC is offering operators to lease the aircraft for ten years, with the leasing rate for a single Baikal in 2025 being Rmb5.4m per month.
‘The lessor asked the airlines to inform which of them is ready to order an aircraft with such financial parameters, and also ‘in case of disinterest due to the high size of the leasing payment’ to inform what rate would be economically efficient for them,’ RBC writes.
GTLC is the executor of an investment project to supply domestic aircraft for the Far Eastern airline Aurora. According to the investment project approved in February 2023, the first five Baikals were valued for Aurora at 1.4 billion or 275.8 million rubles per aircraft. In the second delivery batch in 2026, LMS-901 was already valued at 286.9 million rubles. In addition, at the Eastern Economic Forum in 2023, UZGA, GTLC and Aurora agreed on the preliminary delivery of 95 Baikals in 2026-2030. UZGA said that no change in the price under the already signed contract is under consideration.
As a result, it turns out that small private regional airlines have nothing to renew their fleet of aircraft for passenger and cargo transportations on local airlines. Only TVS-2MS remains as an alternative. For example, in the Republic of Bashkortostan the regional leasing company provided financial support to AviaSphere LLC in the amount of 30 million roubles. This amount will be used to purchase a TVS-2MS aircraft to be used by RusAvia. Leasing support is provided within the framework of the national project aimed at developing small and medium-sized enterprises.
RusAvia, founded in 2016 and part of the Light Air Group, already has a fleet of 10 An-2 aircraft and six Robinson R-44 helicopters. The company’s main activities include performing aviation and chemical operations, as well as aerial photo and geomagnetic surveys. The new aircraft will allow the carrier to expand its operations and increase the efficiency and availability of aviation services.
The project of An-2 aircraft modernisation into TVS-2MS is implemented by the manufacturer LLC Rusaviaprom and Distributor P.M.I. Aero. In eight years since the first serial aircraft was produced, 26 machines have been manufactured. Now three more TVS-2MS aircraft are in the works. This number of aircraft is due, among other things, to the use of a high resource engine, which increases the cost of TVS-2MS compared to An-2 several times.
‘TVS-2MS is the only Russian aircraft for small aviation, the operation and production of which is still ongoing. And our company is the only one in Russia that serially produces light aircraft approved for commercial air transportations. The company has competences and experience in development, testing, certification, serial production, operation, including ground infrastructure, of aircraft weighing up to 5700 kg. The company covers the vital need for light, practical and reliable aircraft that operate in remote regions, which cannot be reached by large mainline aircraft,’ Rusaviaprom told the Russian Aviation website.
According to the company’s representative, the TVS-2MS aircraft has all the best characteristics that the An-2 has, and these are the design and operational features of the aircraft – unpretentiousness to operating conditions, reliability of the airframe and ease of maintenance, the ability to perform flights from unpaved sites, accessibility for pilots of any classification.
‘As a result of modernisation of An-2 aircraft in TVS-2MS its flight characteristics have been significantly improved, expensive aviation petrol has been replaced by more affordable paraffin, noise and vibration have been reduced, comfort for pilots and passengers has been improved, and what is important for the operator – the possibility of using the existing infrastructure and aviation personnel with experience in operating An-2 aircraft has been preserved,’ the company added.
In addition to Ufa Light Air, customers and operators of TVS-2MS aircraft are Kolyma Aviation, Amur Air Base, SiLa airline, Aeroservice airline, Nimbus airline, Minsk Aeroclub of the Republic of Belarus, Saratov Aeroclub, the Tomsk company SibAeroCraft.
Rusaviaprom takes An-2 aircraft in airworthiness and after overhaul for modernisation. ‘The designated service life of the An-2 fuselage is 20 thousand hours and at the same time many An-2 aircraft at aviation enterprises have only 3-5 thousand hours of flight time. According to our estimates, An-2 aircrafts can be operated in Russia for another 10-15 years, and 500 and more An-2 aircrafts with a long remaining life can be modernised, which is a lot,’ Alexey Kryukov, Director General of Rusaviaprom LLC, believes.
The process of An-2 modernisation in TVS-2MS consists of several stages. According to the developer’s specifications, the An-2 airframe is delivered to the company’s shop after overhaul at one of the aircraft repair enterprises. It can be ‘AVIASPECTR’, ‘MARZ’ or ‘SHARZ’. Rusaviaprom modernises the nose section: the motorama, fuel, air, oil, electrical and fire-fighting systems are replaced. A new engine, cowlings and air propeller are installed, as well as a number of engine control instruments in the cockpit.
Once the aircraft is assembled, ground tests are carried out first, followed by check flights. Flight tests are conducted by test pilots of the company’s own flight test facility in accordance with the valid licence of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. At the customer’s request, the aircraft can be equipped with heat- and sound-insulating panels of the passenger cabin, a hatch for aerial photography and airborne laser scanning, a medical module and equipment for work on sanitary missions, as well as equipment for ejecting parachutists.
Over the past few years, the situation regarding the TVS-2MS aircraft has been contradictory. On the one hand, such a machine is urgently needed in regions where there are problems with transport accessibility. At the same time, TVS-2MS has proved its reliability and cost-effectiveness during its operation.
‘For more than eight years it has been flying and carrying passengers on local airlines, with more than 25,000 flight hours. The aircraft has good feedback from operators, flight and engineering staff, as well as passengers. The high importance of the project of An-2 modification into TVS-2MS is evidenced by the attention of the President of the country to it. Vladimir Putin gave two orders, the first one in 2014 to put the aircraft into operation and the second one in 2021 to certify the aircraft,’ explained Alexey Kryukov.
He added that the aircraft is also included in the subsidy programmes applied in accordance with Government Decree No. 1212 and No. 1242, which allow the aircraft to be used with maximum economic efficiency. But the comprehensive programme for the development of the aviation industry until 2030 does not provide for the production of TVS-2MS, and it was not included in it. Rusaviaprom explains this by the fact that the manufacturing plant is not supported either by the aircraft developer or by the relevant ministries. The Ministry of Industry and Trade does not provide assistance to private companies, giving priority to the LMS-901 project. Also, the systemic problem regarding the regulatory and legal status of the An-2 type design and modifications has not been solved. The second presidential instruction to issue a type certificate for the TVS-2MS aircraft has not been fulfilled yet.
Alexey Kryukov believes that it is categorically wrong on the part of the government not to include the TVS-2MS aircraft in the plan and development of the aviation industry. ‘We still hope that this mistake will be corrected. There is no promised new equipment, but already now it is necessary to open new routes and aerodromes, and with the TVS-2MS aircraft it can be done with minimal costs,’ he explained to our website.
So which aircraft can keep local and intra-regional transportations afloat? There is no unambiguous answer to this question. An-2 has been in service for more than 70 years and needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Appearance of LMS-901 in sufficient quantity to replace Antonovs in the nearest 10 years is a bold and optimistic expectation, and at the same time the Ministry of Industry and Trade does not consider full funding and intensification of An-2 remotorisation into TVS-2MS, even though substantial funds from the state budget were allocated for this project in due time.
At the same time, having foreign components in its design, TVS-2MS continues to be mass-produced, and the Novosibirsk enterprise itself is developing in other directions. Thus, an aviation training centre was opened here for training of profile specialists, a flight-testing complex was created inside the company, a design bureau was created for further modification of TVS-2MS.
Rusaviaprom is confident that the aircraft has a great modernisation potential. Currently, specialists of the plant’s design bureau are preparing a domestic glass cockpit for implementation on the aircraft.
