S7 Airlines will receive Tu-214 medium-haul airliners produced by the Kazan Aviation Plant with a two-person cockpit. This was reported by Frequent Flyers.
According to an industry source, a flight engineer will no longer be required on this aircraft. This will eliminate one of the Tu-214's key disadvantages compared with other aircraft similar in a number of flight performance characteristics — the Airbus A321 and Boeing 757-200, which are built with a two-pilot cockpit.
The first flight of the Tu-214 prototype took place in 1996. That was when the aircraft entered serial production in its current form — with a cockpit for three people.
There is nothing fundamentally complicated about this. The Tu-204SM variant with a two-person crew and 222 passengers in a single-class layout made its first flight back in 2010, and at that time it had partially imported avionics. However, by 2013 they had already been replaced with domestic alternatives — it was then that Rostec produced the PNK-204 flight and navigation system.
The United Aircraft Corporation and the State Transport Leasing Company of S7 Group signed a memorandum on the delivery of 100 Tu-214 aircraft, starting from 2029.
According to the newspaper Vedomosti, the Tu-214 will initially be delivered in a version with a three-person crew. A transition to a more modern two-person crew is expected later.
Aviation expert Andrey Velichko told "First Technical" that the Kazan Aviation Plant is capable of producing the Tu-214 with a two-person cockpit within three years, if there are no external delays.