If sanctions are lifted, Russia will return to the international civil aviation market not as a buyer, but as a seller. This forecast was put forward in an interview with "Perviy Technicheskiy" by aviation expert Andrey Velichko, editor-in-chief of the "Aviation of Russia" portal.
He recalled that until 2022, the Russian Federation participated in the global aviation market passively — as an observer, in fact only consuming its results.
Yes, we had our own developments and technologies. But we did not strive to develop critical equipment for civil aviation, because some components could be bought, they were available.
The specialist cited the example of Boeing, which purchases a different percentage of components abroad for different models.
In Russia, import substitution is happening due to force majeure. By and large, sanctions have been and will be beneficial to us. If we made the airframe and some units for the Superjet and MC-21, we purchased most of the aircraft systems and units, control systems, mechanization drives, cabin equipment, and so on, abroad. And now we produce both engines and almost everything else ourselves. Some components are supplied to us by Belarus, but one can hardly call these supplies foreign. And this is our advantage.
Velichko also mentioned China, which, due to its difficult relations with the United States, is forced to implement an import substitution program. However, in the event of complete isolation of equipment supplies, Beijing will have only one way to obtain similar components — from Russia.
Earlier www1.ru reported that "Yakovlev" will be able to produce up to 36 MC-21 aircraft per year in the future.