Kieran Daly/LONDON
WESTERN CARGO companies with interests in the Antonov An-124 Ruslan outsize freighter are expressing growing exasperation with its engines.
The combination of the D-18T turbofan's unreliability and future difficulties in coping with noise restrictions has led to a showdown with Ukrainian engine design bureau Zaporozhye Progress.
Two UK companies - Air Foyle, which is the general sales agent for Antonov's air-freight operations and Heavylift, which runs a joint venture with Volga-Dnepr Airline of Russia - account for most of the An-124 fleet between them.
Air Foyle director of Antonov projects Bruce Bird says: "Technically, I am convinced that they can build perfectly good engines. But the situation has deteriorated to the state where all the participants in the 124 business have now said to the Zaporozhye engine people that they must either get themselves sorted out or we will put Western engines on the aircraft."
He adds that there are "negative financial things involved in re-engineing", but that the engine plant has been demanding high prices for its engine, claiming it to be equivalent to Western engines.
Air Foyle has talked to all three major Western engine manufacturers, but Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney "...have had their fingers burned with other programmes and the users cannot finance up-front engines", Bird says.
Air Foyle reports typical on-wing periods of only 500-600h before a significant failure.
Air Foyle and Volga-Dnepr face further difficulties at the end of 1996, when US Stage 2-phase-out rules will force them to make some of their aircraft Stage 3-compatible. The US Federal Aviation Administration is understood to have indicated that neither carrier would obtain a waiver.
Bird says that Zaporozhye has designed a modification to bring the engine in line with Stage 3 rules, but that work is also hampered by a shortage of funds.
Source: Flight International
