In mid-December 2023, the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Republic of Tatarstan Oleg Korobchenko expressed the opinion that the Kazan Aviation Plant should and can assemble not 20 Tu-214 passenger aircraft per year, but 100, while now one and a half aircraft are produced for the same period.
However, such statements of the official look strange and completely unreliable, taken from the ceiling. The Comprehensive Programme for the development of the aviation industry until 2030 predicts a gradual increase in the production of Tu-214 aircraft: four in 2025, seven in 2026, 17 aircraft in 2027 and from 2028 – to reach a production rate of at least 28 aircraft annually. In total, 115 aircraft are to be manufactured and delivered to airlines by 31 December 2030.
In order for the aircraft plant to fulfil the plans of the Russian government, the production is being modernised, additional funds are being allocated, new shops are being built, the machine park is being modernised, and technical re-equipment of the shops is underway.
“Now we are working on the development and manufacture of brand new semi-automatic and automatic aircraft slipways. This will make it possible to automate the process of docking units and assemblies, as well as to shorten the aircraft assembly cycle,” Konstantin Timofeev, Managing Director of Tupolev, said in his TG-channel.
Aircraft slipway is a device for installation of parts and assemblies with their subsequent fixation in a given position during assembly of wing, fuselage, keel, stabiliser, pylons, nacelles, air intakes. The slipway is part of the assembly tooling for assembly of non-rigid parts of the aircraft – parts that deflect under the action of their own weight or due to air pressure differences. Aircraft builders call the slipway the “cradle” of the aircraft. For example, more than 200 units of slipway assembly equipment are used for the production of Tu-214.
According to Konstantin Timofeev, the plant plans to start using the automatic line for docking fuselage elements and assembling the wing detachable part in 2025.
Earlier, the previous managing director of Tupolev, Vadim Korolev, told the business electronic newspaper Business Online that the new production areas of the final assembly shop will be equipped with modern equipment, which will organise the assembly of the Tu-214 on the same principle as at the Irkutsk Aviation Plant, where the MC-21 is assembled, at Aviastar in Ulyanovsk for the IL-76MD-90A and in Lukhovitsy for the IL-114-300 – an inline line of no-step assembly.
