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Great times ahead for Russian aviation

The last weekend of August was marked by a gate-crashing stampede at Moscow’s Kazansky Railway Station unheard of in the capital since the panic evacuation in the face of the advance by Hitler’s army in 1941.

Crowds storming ticket offices were so huge that the railway administration eventually gave up and opened the gates for people to board commuter trains without tickets — something that was not done even in the heady days of World War II.

The rush was for MAKS-2007, an air show organised every two years at a military airfield in Zhukovsky, 40 km from Moscow. During the three days that the air show was open to the general public, a whopping 650,000 people visited it, a record for any major world air shows. (The better-known Le Bourget in France drew 400,000 last year, Britain’s Farnborough, 150,000, and Aero-India-2007, 100,000).

The unexpected popularity of MAKS-2007 took the organisers by surprise. They ran out of tickets ($14 apiece) on the last day of the air show and had to let visitors in for free to avoid stampede at the gate. The interest generated by the air show was all the more surprising since this year’s display featured few new entries. But then people were looking for something else.

“It feels so good to see that Russia is still a great aviation power,” said one visitor reflecting the mood of MAKS-2007 visitors who braved crowded trains, long queues and scorching heat to enjoy spectacular demonstration flights by famous Russian pilot groups “Strizhi” (the Swifts) and “Russkiye Vityazi” (the Russian Knights) — the world’s only two aerobatics crew performing sky-diving stunts aboard heavy combat planes — the Su-27 and MiG-29 fighter jets.

What helped make MAKS-2007 a big hit is that the Russian aviation has been very much in the public eye recently as a key industrial sector designated to spearhead further resurgence and diversification of the energy-dominated Russian economy. Aviation was one of the prime achievements the Soviet Union was proud of. It stood as a symbol of the triumph of Soviet science and engineering. The Soviet Union used to roll out 700 aircraft a year, more than any other country in the world apart from the United States. It accounted for a quarter of the world’s civilian fleet. Rebuilding a strong aviation industry is more than a matter of prestige for Russia. Given its huge territory spanning 11 time zones and more than inadequate network of rail and motor roads, well-developed air transport is vital for ensuring the country’s security and linking far-away regions.

The current state of the Russian civil aviation industry is a gruesome illustration of how deeply the Russian economy sank after the break-up of the Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, the national carrier Aeroflot broke up into nearly 400 mostly privately owned airlines which were too weak and small to operate at a profit. Without orders, the aircraft industry ground to a standstill. In the past few years, the number of airlines declined by more than half through ongoing consolidation but the aircraft industry could no longer meet their demand for new planes. In 2005, the Russian aviation industry delivered five commercial aircraft — fewer planes than Airbus delivers in a week.

With 90 per cent of Soviet-built airliners due to be grounded by 2015, experts were discussing two options for the government: either it would support Russian carriers by lifting the 40 per cent tax on foreign-made aircraft, which currently applies to all but two biggest Russian operators, or would have to let foreign carriers take over the domestic air travel market.

Either option would toll the death knell for the Russian aircraft building industry and for Russia as a great aviation power. Incredible as it may sound but it is this course of action that top Kremlin aides urged President Vladimir Putin to take. They argued that Russia would never be able to catch up with world leaders in manufacturing sectors and should therefore confine itself to developing energy resources, railway transport corridors from Asia to Europe, as well as IT and other innovative technologies.

The long and fierce debate over Russia’s road of development was eventually won by those who advocated the revival of the country’s engineering sector. Last November, President Putin signed a decree ordering the establishment of a United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), which brought together Russia’s main aircraft design and manufacturing facilities such as Tupolev, Sukhoi, Ilyushin, MiG and Irkut. The new umbrella mega-company, which made its debut at the MAKS-2007 air show, has been tasked with reviving the country’s civil aircraft building industry. Also in the pipeline are plans to set up similar national champions in nuclear energy and ship building.

The UAC has set an ambitious goal to produce and sell about 4,500 aircraft worth some $250 billion by 2025, half of them abroad, and overtake even Soviet-era production records to compete in the world market with Boeing and Airbus. By the end of the first quarter of this century, Russia should churn out over 500 aircraft annually, including 300 airliners, 100 transport planes and more than 100 combat aircraft. Russian Helicopters, also a new company that united the country’s main design and manufacturing facilities, plans to build 500 helicopters by 2025. This is an extremely tall-order goal, considering that Russia’s surviving aircraft building capacities hardly amount to 30 per cent of what the Soviet Union had. But then Russia still has solid foundations to build upon. One is its robust combat aviation industry, which in contrast to civil aviation, has retained its capabilities due to big export orders, mainly from India and China. Su-30 and MiG-29 fighter jets are hot export items, and factories building them have full order books for years to come. Russia’s achievements in combat aviation were on full display at MAKS-2007, which showcased the super manoeuvrable Su-35 and MiG-35 that already use some technology of the future 5th generation fighter jets. The “vector thrust” MiG-35 is a strong contender in the four-nation race for the Indian contract for 126 multi-role combat aircraft. MAKS-2007 saw the world’s first sky-tearing stunt called the “diamond barrel roll” performed by a group of nine combat planes — five Sukhois and four MiGs.

The expertise available in military aircraft construction can be readily used for making commercial planes. In fact, Russia is planning a dramatic shift in aircraft manufacture from military to civilian planes. The current share of combat and civilian aircraft built in Russia is 7:1 in favour of warplanes. While both sectors will expand, the UAC plans to reverse the proportion, making it 2:1 in favour of commercial aircraft by 2025.

Another advantage Russia has is its strong technological skill that somehow survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the shock transition from socialist to capitalist economy. Boeing and Airbus have long tapped into the pool of Russian engineering talent. The Boeing Design Center has been operating in Moscow since 1988 and employs over 1,000 Russian engineers today, while Airbus set up a 150-strong engineering centre in Russia in 2003. Both companies have relied on relatively cheap and highly qualified Russian staff to cut costs and improve the designs of their aircraft. Russian engineers have carried out $1 billion-worth of design work for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner long-range airliner. The same amount of work, if done in the U.S., would have cost Boeing several times more. The Airbus engineering centre in Russia designed several fuselage sections for the A380 Freighter. Both Boeing and Airbus have struck deals to source titanium parts for their aircraft from Russia. Even more valuable for the Western aviation giants have been aviation technologies bought on the cheap from Russia’s struggling design centres. Airbus, for example, acquired critical aircraft design technologies from Central Aero-Hydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) that the company needed to build its first wide-bodied airliner, A-380. For its part, Boeing purchased carbon-fibre technologies from Russia for making Dreamliner, its first airliner with a wholly composite-material fuselage.

However, the West’s hopes of using Russia as a mere supplier for its aircraft companies appear now dashed.

Next year, the UAC plans to launch its Sukhoi SuperJet-100 regional airliner tipped to be the world’s best aircraft in the 75- to 95-passenger class. The company hopes to sell 800 of the SuperJets, which are expected to be cheaper, easier to maintain and consume less fuel than Canada’s Bombardier and Brazil’s Embraer. The SuperJet will be followed by a Tupolev wide-bodied regional airliner for 250-270 seats, and a 150-seat MS-21, the first in a family of twin-engined short- to medium-range airliners scheduled to enter service in 2015.

Both Boeing and Airbus have offered to cooperate with the UAC in building its new commercial aircraft but Russia sees them mainly as competitors and is looking for strategic partners in the developing world to take on the Western giants. Last year, the Russian government made an offer to China but UAC president Alexei Fyodorov favours India for strategic partnership, given the two countries’ shared geopolitical interests and a highly successful long record of cooperation in combat aviation.

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