After import substitution, the certification program for the wide-body Il-96-400M aircraft has been frozen. The test aircraft with tail number 96115 did not take to the skies in August, as reported in the monthly summary by the analytical blog "Letayem vmeste".

For comparison, in July, the aircraft spent 34 hours in the air, flying to Kamchatka, Irkutsk, and Yakutia. The last flight was on the 14th of that month.

The Voronezh Aircraft Plant is the only site for serial production of the Il-96-400M in Russia.

Aviation expert Oleg Panteleev noted that initially, the airliner was not of interest to airlines, which opted for Boeing and Airbus. However, he noted that the long-haul aircraft could still be saved with the help of MS-21-310 technologies.

Earlier, "Pervyy tekhnicheskiy" conducted a direct comparison of the Il-96-400M with the global benchmark for long-haul efficiency – the Boeing 777-300ER.