RuAviation

On 18 September, when it was almost midnight in Moscow, the passenger airliner Tu-204-100E with registration number CU-T1702 of Cuban airline Cubana returned to Havana airport. It arrived from Ulyanovsk, where it had undergone a “heavy” form of maintenance for four years in factory conditions. This was reported in the magazine Vzlet.

This Tu-204 (s/n 64042) was built at Ulyanovsk Aviastar in 2007 and together with the second similar Tu-204-100E (CU-T1701, serial #64035) came to the disposal of Cubana Airlines in December of the same year. Their supplier was Ilyushin Finance Co., which in August 2007 and April 2009 also sent two cargo Tu-204SEs to Cuba.

In recent years, none of the four Tupolev Tu-204s available in Cuba has not flown – they needed maintenance and spare parts.

The first of the cargo Tu-204SEs has been idle in Havana for at least 10 years, while the second one has been idle since autumn 2017. Both passenger Tu-204-100E stopped performing scheduled flights for the airline in 2016, but one of them four years ago still managed to prepare for a long-haul flight to the manufacturing plant for repairs, and in July 2019 it arrived in Ulyanovsk.

At the end of last summer, after the completion of the main scope of maintenance work, the CU-T1702 received a new paint job at the Ulyanovsk enterprise Spektr-Avia, but its overflight after repairs took place only on 10 February this year. Seven months later, on 12 September, it took to the air again, having performed an hour-long check flight before being redeployed to Cuba, and finally, in the afternoon of 17 September, the aircraft departed for Havana.

The first landing for refuelling was at Reykjavik Airport. It covered the distance of about 4,000 kilometres in 5.5 hours. The second – in Gander on the Canadian island of Newfoundland – about 2500 km more and almost 4 hours in the air. In the afternoon of 18 September, the plane set a course for Havana, and after covering about 3,800 km in 5 hours and 15 minutes, arrived at the Cuban capital’s José Martí airport. Jose Marti Airport in the Cuban capital.