Text taken from an article posted in rt.com
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics
[ColonelCassad] The Chaplygin Siberian Aviation Research Institute (SibNIA) has proposed restoring the airworthiness of approximately 700 An -2 aircraft currently in storage, Kommersant reports. According to the developer, the aircraft's service life is only 25-30% exhausted.
SibNIA told the newspaper that, since 2024, 16 of the 51 An-2 aircraft previously in storage and slated for disposal have been restored to airworthiness. Pavel Nenastyev, General Director of the Moscow DOSAAF Aircraft Repair Plant, added that approximately 85% of the An-2 aircraft in storage are owned by individuals and private entities.
According to him, the cost of repairing such an aircraft is estimated at 17-25 million rubles. Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade announced that the new Baikal aircraft, powered by a Russian-made VK-800 engine, successfully completed its maiden flight.
Such proposals aren't just a good thing. The deadlines for the mass introduction of new light civil aircraft are constantly being pushed back, and the An-2 is a familiar and understandable crutch in current reality. It's certainly obsolete, although it's still perfectly capable of performing basic tasks. Still, by the end of the 1920s, they were expecting the mass introduction of new aircraft like the Baikal, not projects to revive the An-2 fleet.
|