Resuming production of the super-heavy military transport aircraft An-124 "Ruslan" is a pointless endeavor. This was stated in an interview with"First Technical" by Oleg Panteleev, Executive Director of AviaPort agency and aviation expert.
According to him, there is no point in reviving a 50-year-old aircraft project now.
With slightly higher expenses for research and development work on a new generation aircraft, we will get a significantly more modern machine that will be more efficient in solving transport tasks, more economical in operation, and more technologically advanced in production. As a result, if we evaluate the entire life cycle, we will save a lot by creating a new aircraft.
Panteleev noted that the issue could be considered if Russia had a production of "Ruslan" that was mothballed a few years ago, and not only the aircraft itself, but also all the components.
And when we have the opportunity to make a serious leap in terms of characteristics and reduce the cost of assembly by increasing technological efficiency, in my opinion, the choice in favor of a new aircraft is obvious.
An-124 "Ruslan" is one of the most load-carrying aircraft in world history, it was released in 1984. The maximum take-off weight of 405 tons allows performing transportation of almost any complexity.
Currently, the domestic machine has no direct analogues. The development cost of one such vessel was estimated at $300 million.