Home » World » Russian airlines ready to halt operations of locally made planes.

Russian airlines ready to halt operations of locally made planes.

Vladimirs Panfilov, Deputy General Director of “IrAero”, has warned that a partial suspension of the use of SSJ-100 aircraft could happen in the near future, but after that a “complete termination of flights with this type of aircraft” is possible.

According to Panfilov, the shortage of American spark plugs, caused by sanctions, “threatens the fulfillment of the flight schedule, as well as endangers the operation of socially important flights”.

Six airlines operating SSJ-100 aircraft have also confirmed the problem.

The Russian industrial sector has offered several options to replace the American spark plugs, but none of them have been certified yet.

In connection with this, carriers could reduce the number of flights made by SSJ-100 aircraft in the summer.

The shortage of spark plugs can be observed even at the largest “SuperJet” operator – the airline “Rossiya”, which is part of the “Aeroflot” group. For this reason, only 40% of the 76 “SuperJet” planes at the disposal of the airline will be used in the spring and summer.

The representatives emphasize that currently active work is being done on import substitution of the most important parts of the SuperJet.

Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade claims that analogues of Russian spark plugs are already in production, so airlines hope that the problems will be solved soon.

“Rosteh” representatives believe that everything is being done so that Russian citizens can continue to fly with SSJ-100 aircraft, which is the main part of the fleet of regional airlines.

The “Sukhoi SuperJet-100” aircraft was developed together with 20 leaders of the aviation industry around the world.

Turbofan engines “SaM146” were produced by the company “PowerJet”, which is a joint venture of the Russian “ODK-Saturn” and the French “Safran Aircraft Engines” until the introduction of sanctions.

Also, several engine components were supplied by the US company “Unison Industries”, including spark plugs. According to several sources, the spark plugs are supposed to be changed every 1000 cycles (takeoff-landing).

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