A public demonstration of the model of the new wide-body Tu-454 liner does not guarantee that this large-scale, long and very expensive project will ever see the light of day, even taking into account the allocation of funding. This was stated to "Perviy Tekhnicheskiy" by a member of the board of the Association of Small Aviation Enterprises (MalAP), the founder of the flight safety service RunAvia Andrey Patrakov.
He recalled that the Tu-454 project had at least three predecessors, including the Russian-Chinese CR929, which eventually became a plane purely for China, although the costs were split in half.
Before that, there was the ShFMS project, which also remained on paper. Even earlier, they started working together with Airbus — at that time I even participated in the development of an aircraft based on A330. The list could go on and on. So far, what they are showing is just a project.
Patrakov emphasized that it will be possible to talk seriously about Tu-454 when it is included in the program with clear funding.
Although, as we can see, mastering money does not guarantee a result at the output. Therefore, I would treat this project as one of the possible options for the development of long-range wide-body aircraft in Russia.
The Tu-454 will be equipped with two promising PD-26 engines based on the PD-35 gas generator. The timing of the possible launch of the program and other technical characteristics of the aircraft have not yet been reported.