RE: The Russian Civil Aviation Industry in shambles!
The CIS aviation industry certainly does need investment by their countries government. It has been obvious for years. You have beauties like the TU-204 coming out of Russia, yet because of reliability its unlikely that many airlines will opt to buy these aircraft.
If no steps are to be taken by the Russian Government (or others, Ukraine for example) to curb the problem of unreliability in factors such as receivership, marketing and even down to manufacturing with parts, then the state of the aviation industry will continue to decrease with dreadful consequences.
It costs a lot of money to buy all the parts and assemble the aircraft. Russian manufacturers are cash-strapped and without the finance they cannot afford to build planes in mass production and so we get this problem of unreliability of delivery.
The Russian aircraft have a large market. They are cheap and once flying, if maintained properly, are very reliable. To third world countries this is just the right type of aircraft you want, so the market is there, stretching from the Far East in to the former USSR and Africa.
If they can get a much needed cash injection then they have potential, maybe not against the big boys like Airbus and Boeing but in their own niche market.
The TU-204 is a beautiful aircraft, as I said earlier, it could compete with the A321 or 757 as shown by orders by TNT. The technology is much the same (fly by wire I believe?) and they have western engines, there is nothing stopping Tupolev, selling this aircraft except the financing.
By the way,well done on an interesting topic 🙂
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