In November 2024, the heads of PJSC “Yakovlev” and JSC “Tupolev” Andrey Boginsky and Konstantin Timofeev were relieved of their posts. UAC named the reason for the personnel reshuffle as the decision to consolidate the management of civil programs at the level of a single corporate center of the corporation.
“The functions of managing the activities of PJSC Yakovlev will be performed directly by UAC CEO Vadim Badekha, who will combine the posts of the head of UAC and Yakovlev.” The management of Tupolev’s activities will be performed by UAC Deputy Director General for State Defense Order and Management of Operational-Tactical Aviation Programs Alexander Bobryshev, who will also take the post of Managing Director of Tupolev,” the UAC press service said.
Streamlined formulations of the reasons for cardinal reshuffles of top management in the two leading design bureaux of the country do not give an unambiguous answer to the question: “what was the reason for the dismissal of Boginsky and Timofeev?”. In this regard, there is reason to assume that the answer lies in the permanent postponement of the start of commercial operation of the MC-21 and the failure to meet the deadlines for completing import substitution and increasing serial production of the Tu-214. However, such an assumption would be extremely superficial.
In early November, the position of the Rostov region governor was vacated, and Russian President Vladimir Putin offered UAC CEO at the time Yuri Slyusar to head the region. In 1996, Slyusar graduated from the Faculty of Law at Moscow State University. In 2007, he defended his thesis at the Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, specializing in management in social and economic systems. He started working in the structures of the aviation industry in 2010, when he was appointed Director of the Aviation Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. In other words, Yuri Slyusar is a professional manager with a legal education that has nothing to do with aircraft construction.
As a responsible head of a large corporation, Yuri Slyusar has assured many times with regard to the MC-21 airplane that the airplane will fly. But as the deadlines approached, the promises remained only promises. One of the last promises was made on February 6, 2024. Then, during the 11th National Civil Aviation Infrastructure Exhibition NAIS, Slyusar said that the first flight of the import-substituted MC-21 airliner is planned to be performed in the first half of 2024. Unrealistic deadlines were also announced for other civilian programs, for example, for the Superjet.
It is not known what the UAC CEO’s predictions were based on, although specialists and aircraft builders realized that these assurances were not true. At the end of February this year the head of Rostec Sergey Chemezov disavowed all the promises of high officials from the Ministry of Industry and Trade and UAC and honestly said that the beginning of deliveries of almost all types of domestically produced aircraft is postponed for at least two years. First of all it concerns MC-21, SJ-100 and Tu-214.
In the context of the reorganization of the UAC management, it is necessary to mention the comprehensive program for the development of the automotive industry. Its first version was adopted by the Russian government in June 2022. At that time, it was forecasted that six MC-21 airplanes would leave the Irkutsk aircraft plant workshops as early as 2024, 12 airplanes in 2025, etc. As for the Tu-214, the forecast was even more optimistic: three airliners – in 2023, seven – in 2024, and from 2025 Kazan was to produce ten airplanes annually.
In September 2023, the Russian government’s website published Order No. 2259-r, which made adjustments to the program, but in May of this year, against the backdrop of Sergei Chemezov’s statements, the Ministry of Industry and Trade was forced to adjust its plans again in the direction of reducing the volume of new aircraft production, and a third version of the comprehensive program appeared, which also cannot be implemented within the planned timeframe and in full due to delays in the supply of components.
Who prepared reports to the government to formulate forecasts for the civil aircraft industry? Based on the data that came from UAC, UDC and other corporations and holdings, this is the direct task of the Aviation Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. At the same time, annual adjustments to the comprehensive program show that the reports are unprepared and attempts to embellish the state of affairs. This used to be called eyewash with all its consequences. Therefore, as soon as the opportunity arose, the country’s leadership decided to change the head of UAC, and since both Andrei Boginsky and Konstantin Timofeev were appointed to their positions by Yuri Slyusar, their dismissal now does not look unexpected and sensational.
However, it is fair to say that not everything depended on the former heads of Yakovlev and Tupolev. In order to meet the deadlines for new aircraft, the developers and suppliers of systems and units must also meet their deadlines. This is where the weakest link is, and Yakovlev was constantly working with its cooperation partners, “pushing” them and reminding them of the need to meet delivery schedules.
For example, in February 2024, the Management Committee for External Cooperation of Yakovlev PJSC headed by Andrey Boginsky held a field meeting in Samara at Aviaagregat enterprise of Technodinamika Holding, where the issues of deliveries under the SJ-100 program were considered. Andrey Boginsky then drew the attention of the heads of enterprises to the critical importance of organizing work on qualification and certification of components. By the end of March, Yakovlev specialists planned to conduct additional field audits of the cooperation enterprises in order to conduct a detailed analysis of the organization of work processes for interaction with suppliers of the second and third levels. The same control on the part of Yakovlev was also applied to the suppliers of components for MC-21.
In April 2024, at the regular meeting of the External Cooperation Steering Committee, Andrey Boginsky urged suppliers to strictly adhere to the declared delivery dates of systems and units to ensure that flights would be completed in accordance with the planned deadlines. At that time, the first flight of the MC-21 73055 prototype was scheduled for mid-summer, now it is expected in the 20th of December.
Cooperation enterprises, as a rule, are subdivisions of large holdings, which in their turn are part of Rostec, and only the management of the state corporation can influence the observance of schedules for the creation and delivery of aircraft systems. Therefore, how the new managers of Yakovlev and Tupolev will work with suppliers and whether they will be able to meet the deadlines, will show 2025, which should be the final year of the certification program for four types of aircraft: MC-21, SJ-100, Tu-214 and IL-114-300.
The shortened version of the MC-21 passenger plane will seat an estimated 160-170 passengers, Rostec head Sergei Chemezov said on Nov. 12. “It is premature to give exact figures because the development is at the initial stage,” he added.
The Yakovlev Engineering Center of Irkut Corporation at the initial stage of the MC-21 project was developing two versions of the aircraft: the basic MC-21-200 and the enlarged -300, but the UAC management decided to focus on the MC-21-300 version. During Irkut’s presentation of the MC-21 aircraft at MAKS-2017, the capacity of the MC-21-200 modification was specified from 130 to 165 passengers depending on the cabin layout. In the import-substituted form, the airplanes have indexes -210 and -310, respectively. Andrei Boginsky spoke about the start of work on the MC-21-210 version in April of this year. Development of the preliminary design of MC-21-210 will cost the budget in 2024-2025 in 1.94 billion rubles.
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At the All-Russian conference “Fuel Combustion: Theory, Experiment, Applications”, Yury Shmotin, Deputy General Director of UDC, spoke about the possibilities and limitations of electric engines in modern civil aviation. According to him, the main problem of future aviation electric motors is the weight of the battery required to provide one hour of flight time for such airplanes as A320 or MC-21. Such a battery will weigh about 120 tons, which significantly exceeds the maximum takeoff weight of the MC-21-310 aircraft, which is 79,250 kg.
When asked about the possibility of developing an electric motor for a medium-range airplane, he replied that “such a thing will never happen.” Yuri Shmotin emphasized that today there is no substitute for gas turbine engines for civil aircraft, and in the next 30-50 years there is no alternative to turbojet in civil aviation. In the future, more compact and efficient solutions in the field of electric propulsion systems may appear. In his opinion, it is possible to develop electric motors with a capacity of up to 1 megawatt, but this will also be enough for only one hour of flight, which limits their use in the realities of air transportation.
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Within the framework of the forum AMTEXPO-2024 Anatoly Gaidansky, the general director of the company “AeroComposite” told about import substitution in aircraft construction. He noted that no one has set the task to build an airplane within one country in the last decades. During the long years of the open market in Russia a large number of domestic suppliers were lost, and now time is needed for their emergence and development of relevant experience and competencies. Anatoly Gaidansky believes that within 2-3 years this goal will be achieved.
At the same time, he noted that in respect of import substitution of polymer composite materials the issue has been solved. Composites used in civil and military aircraft construction, carbon plastics and glass plastics have been substituted since 2018. “On the one hand, sanctions are a threat. But on the other hand, if a country has developed basic industries and an engineering school, new opportunities open up. This is what happened with composite materials,” said the general director of AeroComposite.
However, according to him, another situation is developing in metallurgy. Now the domestic aircraft industry is faced with the fact that the possibility of choosing the necessary structural materials is very limited. For example, there are no aluminum and steel alloys of the required quality. There are also problems in some basic industries, such as the production of bearings and the manufacture of machining equipment. The situation is complicated by the fact that these problems are being solved very slowly.
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At the initial stage of operation of new Russian-made airplanes – MC-21 and SJ-100 – it is necessary to distribute them among a limited number of airlines in order to speed up the collection of information on the peculiarities of the equipment’s operation and treatment of “childhood diseases”, says Vladimir Kamynin, Managing Director of Red Wings.
According to him, at the stage of development of new types it is important to accumulate statistics, analyze it and quickly make changes in the rules of operation of the entire fleet. There are two approaches to aircraft distribution: even distribution of one or two aircraft between many companies, as it was practiced in the 90s, or concentration of aircraft at one carrier, i.e. monopoly.
Uniform distribution makes it difficult to collect statistics and share experience in operating new airplanes, while concentration eliminates competition. The optimal option, according to Vladimir Kamynin, is to determine the appropriate scale of airlines for fleet distribution, balancing between preventing monopolization and efficient development of new equipment.
“When new aircraft are widely distributed in small batches between small companies, it is difficult to ensure both the accumulation of relevant statistics and the rapid dissemination of knowledge on aircraft operation,” the head of Red Wings Airlines told RBC.
In November 2024, two MC-21 prototype aircraft, 73051 and 73054, performed flights in Zhukovsky. Five flights were performed, all lasting more than four hours. With four flights in November, 73051 completed an evaluation of the wing de-icing system with reconfiguration of the system in case of various failures. In the final flight of the 2024 test program, the crew of Flight 73054 evaluated the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft with improved wing mechanization.
No flights are planned in December in Zhukovsky under the program of certification of import-substituted systems. At present, PJSC Yakovlev is forming a crew to take to the skies in Irkutsk with the 73055 aircraft in a partially import-substituted form. The airplane has been moved from the final assembly shop at the Irkutsk Aviation Plant to the flight test station, but the possible dates for the start of flights have not been determined yet, and the airplane is still being prepared.
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