Antonov production in Ukraine, which mainly occurred at their Kiev plant (formerly known as Aviant):
(from Ukrainian wikipedia: Державне підприємство «Антонов»)
Obviously, production has been slow-paced ever since the golden days, but they were still in business… Until 2015, where the above statistics simply end. Not a single aircraft has been built since, from what I can find (last confirmed delivery June 2015). They have been doing repairs and such, though, and about 10 aircraft from old, cancelled orders remain at the Kiev plant in various states of (in)completion. The somewhat smaller Kharkov plant ceased operations in 2014, with three unfinished An-72/74’s remaining on the factory floor (Kharkov is included in the above graph, it’s not only Kiev).
https://www.epravda.com.ua/publicati…/08/21/639792/
https://www.vestifinance.ru/articles/99707
They had big hopes for the Saudi deal but it ultimately fell through as you mentioned, and the one main, by far most reliable customer they ever had, Russia now produces and services all the Antonovs it needs domestically. Production is mainly at VASO, where they’ve averaged about 5 An-148/158’s a year since 2010 (annual reports), some (still?) An-140 production occurs in Samara, and of course the Aviastar-SP factory in Ulyanovsk services the heavy Antonov fleet (both RuAF and the Volga-Dnepr civilian freighter which is HQ-ed there too), and has two An-124’s under construction.
But even if they produce them too and in fact in larger numbers than Ukraine itself, Russia is in the process of weaning itself from Antonovs, pretty much only because of the hijinks in Kiev five years ago and all the ramifications of that (plus all kinds of sanctions and counter-sanctions and all that), and it really does seem like this is bound to spell the end of the Antonov legacy. No new (Ukrainian) planes for five years, deals that go nowhere, company liquidations, endless restructurings and stuff going on, CEO’s resigning and so on and so forth.
My bet is that the remainder of the mother company will be bought up by the Chinese or something for pocket change, and perhaps the “brand” will live on in some form after that, but it just wont be the same. Don’t wanna go all political about it, but since Oleg Antonov was Russian and the whole thing started in Russia, if it can’t live on in Ukraine the name should go back there. Hell, even the famous Ruslan and Mriya team was mainly Russian, headed by chief engineer Tolmachyov whom I wrote a little obituary to last year when he passed away in Ulyanovsk, where he worked for the aforementioned Volga-Dnepr.
Does anybody have a TerraServer account? Their imagery tends to get updated about once a week for a given location… Unfortunately the free trial membership is severely restricted.
Well, I checked it out myself. Indeed, the satellite imagery is available on TerraServer and is timestamped April 18th, so earlier than Putin’s visit.
Do note that there are two smaller drones parked to the left of the Okhotnik too. Orion is the top one, I guess, going by the size and the seemingly grey color. The white one closest to Okhotnik is too small to be Altius though.
First pre-serial (?) Mi-38T test flight, on a very windy winter’s day in Kazan:
So, half a year later – serial Mi-38T… Vividly green pixel camo, looks odd.
Apparently, the Russian President is in Akhtubinsk right now, so something’s up. When he arrived, six (!) T-50’s were escorting the Il-96…
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