Rosaviation initiates development of a light training aircraft due to the fact that half of the foreign STS fleet is stopped due to difficulties with engine maintenance. An acute need for such machines is experienced by aviation training centers all over Russia, the Head of Flight Operations Department of Rosaviation Vladimir Izrayev said at the annual meeting of the Union of Aviation Industrialists on April 26, 2023.
According to Vladimir Izrailev, today in all nine flight schools of the department foreign-made aircrafts are used for pilot training: Cessna 172, Diamond 40/42, L-410, Bell and Eurocopter light helicopters. Israel noted that now about half of these machines are out of order. The problem is in the supply of foreign components for these planes and helicopters, the situation is especially difficult with the engines. “Engines are delivered for a long time, are expensive and sometimes are not delivered,” he noted.
According to Israelyev, he does not see any solution at the moment, but if it is not found, then soon there will be no one to fly on the mainline aircrafts, which the Russian industry is developing to replace the Western-made airliners. He said that Rosaviation has sent a proposal to the Ministry of Industry and Trade to create a Russian aircraft with the necessary characteristics for training.
Andrei Boginsky, Deputy Director General of UAC, who also took part in the meeting, said that Rosaviation had not purchased new aircraft due to lack of money for several years. Meanwhile, not long ago UAC was developing a light six-seat single-engine aircraft Yak-118, a modification of the Soviet Yak-18T. Boginsky said that the company is ready to begin the development of the aircraft, if there are resources for it.
A representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade said that the development of Yak-118 is in its early stages, the project has not been sent to the department. If it happens, the funding will be considered when the budget is being formed.
After the 1990s, there have been no attempts to create such an aircraft for aviation schools in Russia. But on May 17, 1994 the first flight of the IL-103 light multipurpose airplane took place. The airplane was lifted into the sky by Igor Gudkov, the test pilot of Ilyushin Design Bureau.
The work on the development of the airplane of a size uncharacteristic for the Ilyushin firm started in 1988, when a notice about the contest for the design of the initial training airplane was published in the Wings of the Fatherland magazine. In the shortest possible time, an initiative group of young design bureau employees prepared a project that passed the initial selection. Subsequently, it was optimized to look like the future Il-103. The aircraft was equipped with an I0-360ES engine produced by American Teledyne Continental Motors.
As a training aircraft IL-103 has not received wide distribution, was made a little less than 70 machines, which is a lot for the Russian aircraft, created in the difficult years for our aircraft industry, but little for vehicles of this size. The ILs were supplied to customers in Russia and exported to the Republic of Belarus, Peru, Myanmar and South Korea. The IL-103 contributed greatly to the development of certification and validation procedures for type certificates. The initial certification was carried out by the Aviation Register of the Interstate Aviation Committee, which issued a certificate of approval on February 15, 1996. And in 1998, approval was also received from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
