The Irkutsk airlines Angara and IrAero, as well as the Yakut Polar Airlines, appealed to the relevant departments with a request to extend the technical shelf life of An-24 and An-26 passenger aircraft, most of which will soon have to be written off. Interfax reports this.
During a speech at a round table in the Federation Council, the first deputy general director of the company that owns Angara, Sergei Zorin, noted that regional airlines now have about 150 aircraft, of which two thirds are these are An-24 and An-26 with an average age of 50 years.
According to a report by the State Research Institute of Civil Aviation, by 2030, a quarter of aircraft will be written off. According to Zorin, this will happen even earlier — in 2028 — due to the redistribution of work volumes from foreign airliners to Russian ones. In addition, the speaker noted, major overhaul of aircraft would be impractical, since its cost would be about 200 million rubles.
“Based on this, we can say that there is no replacement for the An-24 and An-26 today. We place bets on Il-114-300 and TVRS-44. <…> The main tasks, in our opinion, are two. The first is, after all, the extension of the operation of the An-24 and An-26 until there is saturation of TVRS aircraft. The second is to increase attention to controlling the timing of production and pricing of TVRS,” Zorin added.
Nevertheless, he believes that “the IL-114 is not a full-fledged replacement for the An-24,” and the TVRS-44, despite the program plan, will appear in the amount of 10 units no earlier than 2027. As an Angara representative clarified, the cost of the latest aircraft is comparable to the cost of “short- and medium-haul jet aircraft, which are 3-4 times larger in capacity.”
Deputy General Director of IrAero Sergei Krupnov said that in 2024 and 2025 the company needs to “remotorize, that is, service 24 engines,” however, the Aramil Plant confirmed the possibility of servicing four engines per year. Krupnov also drew attention to the problem of the lack of aircraft engines for the Sukhoi Superjet and suggested that in 2025 there will no longer be enough of them.
After the start of the war in Ukraine, the largest Russian airlines and their leaders came under sanctions from the European Union, Canada, the United States and other countries. In addition, Boeing and Airbus suspended deliveries of spare parts to Russia and stopped maintaining and supporting aircraft of Russian airlines; due to restrictions, leasing agreements were terminated.
In September last year, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) gave Russia a “red flag” on its flight safety audit page in 187 countries around the world. In May, Project found that Russian airlines had reduced flight safety requirements due to a shortage of spare parts.