Aeroflot Russian International Airlines (ARIA) has reached agreement to acquire its Pratt & Whitney PW2337-powered 20 Ilyushin Il-96M/Ts through lease financing rather than direct purchase.
ARIA's order includes 17 passenger Il-96Ms and three Il-96T freighters, to be purchased by a joint-venture leasing company established by the National Reserve Bank of Russia and American International Trade Finance, a subsidiary of the US insurance group AIG.
According to Nickolay Glushkov, Aeroflot deputy general director, the leasing company will be registered outside Russia, possibly within Ireland, and will have an equity of about $25 million. ARIAwill take the aircraft on operating lease from the company. Glushkov adds that there will be a buy-back option for a "conditional, very low price".
The US Export-Import bank is providing a loan of $1 billion for the PW2337 engines and Rockwell-Collins avionics, while the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development is to finance airframe production by VASO of Voronezh under Russian guarantees which have already been issued for the first seven aircraft.
Source: Flight International
