Siberian carriers IrAero and Aurora Airlines have each signed agreements covering the acquisition of domestically-built aircraft including the Yakovlev MC-21 and SJ-100.
Irkutsk-based IrAero will take 37 aircraft, comprising seven MC-21s and 21 SJ-100s plus a batch of nine Tupolev Tu-214s.
It signed an agreement of intent with Yakovlev during the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.
“We are pleased to co-operate with a domestic manufacturer and are interested in expanding our fleet with modern civil airliners,” says IrAero chief Yuri Lapin.
Aurora has reached a follow-on deal for five MC-21s and two SJ-100, expanding a previous agreement for 10 MC-21s and eight SJ-100s.
The carrier’s chief, Konstantin Sukhorebrik, says the two aircraft types are “what we need”, given the projected growth in passenger traffic.
He says the twinjets will “allow us to raise the level of quality and service to a new height”.
Both carriers will acquire the aircraft through leasing agreements for delivery by 2035.
Yakovlev chief Andrei Boginsky says the airline pacts demonstrate that the company is working on establishing a “stable portfolio” of orders going “far beyond” the end of the current decade.
This is despite “all the complexity” associated with launching serial production of civil aircraft, he says, particularly with substitution of imported foreign-built equipment with domestically-supplied equivalents.
