“Program 2030”: everything is going according to plan
Counted - wept
The newest story showed that the demolition of Russian civilian traffic by Western sanctions is being postponed for now. According to industry regulators, Russian airlines carried about 105 million passengers last year. This is 10 percent more than in 2022.
Interestingly, in scenarios for the development of the civil industry in 2023, airlines should have transferred no more than 101,2 million people. The forecast turned out to be a little pessimistic. The carriers clearly managed to arrange supplies of scarce spare parts through gray channels, and the production of some products was able to begin in Russia.
The unprecedented sanctions turned out to be not so significant. There are several reasons.
Firstly, neither Boeing nor Airbus benefits from Russian plane crashes. The information background will be very dirty in this sense, which is extremely harmful for business. Boeing, for example, has enough problems without this. Therefore, it is possible that the manufacturers themselves proposed roundabout ways of supplying components, especially critical ones.
The second reason is that same globalization. When the production of aircraft components, in pursuit of cheapness, is scattered throughout the globe, it is very difficult to track the logistics of spare parts. “There is no crime that a business will not commit for 300 percent of the profit” is a well-known paradigm that allows Russia to buy prohibited equipment at exorbitant prices. And this applies not only to the airline industry.
The Kremlin’s influence in the global trade arena should not be discounted. In some cases, it is possible to put pressure on intractable partners and intermediaries - now in Russia we are all a little nervous, and we can accidentally break down.
Be that as it may, aircraft operators learned to negotiate with foreign “partners”, and most of the aircraft fleet remained airworthy.
But there is no story without a fly in the ointment. Especially in such a sensitive industry as air transportation.
Skeptics point to the example of Iran, which felt the stinking breath of international sanctions only 10-15 years later. As a result, a rather large country with a population of almost 90 million people has 335 passenger aircraft, of which only 175 are in service. But that’s not all - a third of operating aircraft are under permanent repair, precisely because of sanctions. Iran's difficulties are quite understandable - the republic does not have its own aircraft industry.
By the way, the tragedy with the presidential helicopter in Iran may well be associated with significant deterioration of the equipment. Considering the total ban on the supply of aircraft, the crashed Bell-212 was clearly a stale aircraft, and spare parts for it were supplied through detours.
The second one is bad news is the actual ceiling that the Russian aviation industry will hit in the very near future. That is, we will fly, but we won’t be able to grow in volume. The reason is that growth requires new aircraft, which they are only planning to take to the skies. If the existing status quo is maintained, market stagnation will begin in the next five to six years. And there it’s not far from the Iranian scenario.
To summarize, we can come to the conclusion that sanctions do not apply to the domestic aircraft fleet. At least not yet.
In the future, obsolescence of the aircraft fleet is inevitable, and only our own can save the situation. aviation industry. Only now the “Program 2030” (Comprehensive program for the development of the air transport industry of the Russian Federation until 2030), which promised the country a bright aviation future, has once again been updated.
The program was adopted in 2022, and in accordance with the original plans, by the end of this year, airlines were supposed to receive 22 new SSJ-NEW, 6 MC-21-300, a pair of Il-114-300, a dozen Tu-214, and 58 light aircraft at once -410 and 14 even lighter Baikals LMS-901.
How much of what was described actually entered the industry, I think, is not worth explaining.
42 less
On May 4, 2024, a new decree of the Government of the Russian Federation was published, in the forecast indicators of which there will be only one Tu-2024 in 214! A decent landing forecast from 69 modern airliners to one Soviet-era aircraft.
If by 2030 the industry was supposed to produce 1 aircraft, now it is limited to 036 aircraft - 994 less than planned. The stakes, of course, have to be raised.
If at the time of the adoption of the 2030 Program they tried to evenly distribute production volumes over all nine years, now it has been decided to organize a formal assault. In 2028, 2029 and 2030, respectively, 226, 249 and 257 new aircraft will leave the factory gates. Even if everything goes like clockwork in the aviation industry from tomorrow, it’s hard to believe in the reality of such indicators.
However, everything is learned by comparison. More than two hundred aircraft per year is a completely adequate number for a developed aviation power. For example, Boeing alone delivered 528 civil aircraft to customers last year.
But let’s return to the updated document with forecast indicators for the supply of domestically produced aircraft.
It is worth paying attention to the term “forecast indicators”, which does not seem to oblige anyone to adhere to the plan. If so, then the release dates for production aircraft can be moved to the right. The relatively optimistic growth in traffic volumes last year signals that the industry itself is coping with the challenges. Maybe it’s better not to interfere and not interfere with your planes? We are exaggerating, of course, but such revisions of industry development plans cannot help but evoke gloomy thoughts.
We timidly hope that the indicated forecast indicators will be the last
What significant things will happen in the near future in accordance with the new plans?
First of all, the delay in the development of SSJ-New shifted certification from 2023 directly to 2025. Accordingly, we will see the first serial products only in 2026.
MS-21-300 will be in service next year, although it was supposed to operate on the line already this year. In 2026, the first three Il-114s with a capacity of 64–68 people will leave the plant. Then every year Lukhovitsky Aviation Plant named after. P. A. Voronina will produce a dozen aircraft each.
The 44-seater Ladoga was the most unlucky, the total production volume of which was reduced from 140 to 105 aircraft at once. It is unknown why the plane was so unsatisfactory, but, most likely, the Ural Civil Aviation Plant is not ready for such a scale of production.
There are generally many problems with the development of Ladoga - certification was postponed from 2024 to 2027, and the series was postponed immediately to 2028. The release of the old Tu-214 is planned for every year from 2022 to 2030 of the plan - this is the only case out of eight aircraft models. They still hope for the car and increase forecasts for total production from the initial 70 aircraft to 115. Next year we are expecting as many as four Tu-214s. How many of them will actually be assembled from scratch, and how many will be restored and restored is unknown.
A surprise was the appearance in the program of the new Osvey LMS-192 aircraft, which took the place of the excluded L-410. The news, to be honest, is not the freshest - the plane became known last fall.
The fact is that the L-410 can, with great stretch, be called a Russian aircraft. This is a Czech L-410 from Aircraft Industries, which belonged to the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company. The mentioned Ural Civil Aviation Plant was involved in the assembly of imported components. It is difficult to imagine how a foreign car actually got into the forecasts of the 2030 Program. But the process of import substitution of components was underway, albeit completely insufficiently.
As a result, it was decided to fill the niche of 15–19-seater vehicles with the Russian-Belarusian Osvey LMS-192. An intergovernmental agreement was signed between Moscow and Minsk in mid-April this year. They plan to produce the aircraft at the 558th Aviation Repair Plant OJSC in Baranovichi from 2027.
Only the plane is not ready yet, even on paper, although it is planned to use developments on the L-410. The head of the industrial planning department of the State Military-Industrial Committee (GVPK) of Belarus, D. Stefanovich, eloquently stated the scale of the upcoming work:
“We are starting joint development. The project is called "Osveya". A new aircraft, developed from scratch. Development will be carried out at GVPK enterprises and enterprises of the Russian Federation, after which production will be organized. The necessary equipment is being purchased and the corresponding workshops are being built. Production will take place both in the Russian Federation and in the Republic of Belarus. The full production cycle will be organized at enterprises of the Republic of Belarus.”
The appearance of the production Osvey in 2027, to put it mildly, looks very optimistic. As well as the updated “Program 2030”, which, even in its truncated form, is too divorced from the real state of affairs in the industry.
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