Tu-454 may not be viable even with combined design bureaus

The new project of the wide-body airliner Tu-454 looks ambitious, but none of the remaining design bureaus will be able to handle it alone. This was stated to "First Technical" by Andrey Patrakov, a member of the board of the Association of Small Aviation Enterprises (MalaP), founder of the flight safety service RunAvia.

The industry expert asked the question - "is the entire United Aircraft Corporation competent enough to make aircraft?".

Unfortunately, we don't have a single full-fledged design bureau left. The current practice with the MC-21 and Superjet shows that the remnants of the last few design bureaus, which were brought together, are working.

Andrey Patrakov, founder of the RunAvia flight safety service

Patrakov suggested that things are moving towards the creation of a kind of united design bureau, which will become more or less viable and will be able to fully cover all the necessary competencies. He recalled that difficulties arose in the modernization and even in the simple import substitution of Soviet projects - the same Tu-214.

How much effort did it take, and only last year did some result appear, and we have not yet seen a continuation. Serial operation of the import-substituted Tu-214 has not yet begun, which means that not everything has been completed yet.

Andrey Patrakov, founder of the RunAvia flight safety service

Therefore, it is incorrect to talk about the implementation of such ambitious and large-scale projects as the Tu-454 by the forces of only one design bureau, Patrakov emphasized. In these conditions, the implementation of the Tu-454 is possible only if the efforts of the entire United Aircraft Corporation are combined - and even this does not guarantee the result.

Oleg Panteleev, Executive Director of the AviaPort analytical service, explained that the Tu-454 project may "not take off" if it is focused only on the domestic market.