Honored Pilot of the USSR and Chairman of the Civil Aviation Commission of the Public Council of Rostransnadzor, Oleg Smirnov, told "Pervy Tekhnichesky" about the deep crisis in Russian civil aviation. According to him, there is a risk of losing transport stability due to the wear and tear of the Western aircraft fleet and the prolonged recovery of domestic production.
The situation is a consequence of many years of dependence on foreign supplies and the destruction of the production base in the 1990s.
Smirnov noted that past mistakes led to a critical state of the entire aircraft manufacturing system.
We are now experiencing the consequences of the mistaken policy of "The West will help us." The reliance on imports led to the degradation of national aircraft manufacturing.
The expert also recalled that until the 1990s, the country had its own fully developed aviation infrastructure and a large fleet of aircraft.
In 1990, we had 14,000 aircraft and not a single Western one.
According to him, the key risk lies in a possible "time gap" when old aircraft will exhaust their resources, and new domestic models will not have time to take their place.
