The joint Russian-Indian project for a medium military transport aircraft MTA based on the Il-214 could have received several engine options – from the PS-90 to the promising PD-14M. Aviation expert Alexey Zakharov revealed the details of the failed project.
According to him, Russian and Indian specialists repeatedly changed the parameters of the future aircraft over several years. The parties discussed various options for payload capacity, flight range, take-off and landing characteristics, and even engines.
Using the Il-214 project as a base, our partners, as the designers of the Ilyushin Design Bureau put it, simply picked their brains. Many options were considered, in which the load, range, take-off and landing characteristics, and engines were changed.
However, the program never reached serial production, and India eventually chose American Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Boeing C-17 Globemaster III.
Earlier it became known that India announced a tender for 12 billion dollars for the purchase of military transport aircraft. Among the likely participants is the domestic Il-76MD-90A, with competitors including Lockheed Martin, Airbus, and Embraer.