The announced deliveries of Il-114-300 to Indian airlines may remain on paper, despite the country's real interest in the Russian regional aircraft. This conclusion was reached by Oleg Smirnov, Honored Pilot of the USSR, Chairman of the Civil Aviation Commission of the Public Council of Rostransnadzor, and Advisor on Flight Safety to the President of the Russian Flight Crew Trade Unions.
The expert believes that India's need for Il-114-300 class aircraft is quite understandable. With a population of over 1.5 billion people, the country has a large number of remote areas, including mountainous ones, and the development of railway infrastructure there faces serious limitations.
Smirnov points out that there is no mass production of the Il-114-300 yet, and statements about large foreign deliveries, in his opinion, are used by Russian officials as an excuse to demonstrate the successes of an industry that has long experienced serious problems with the production of domestic civil aircraft.
One can say with a fair degree of certainty that India will not receive them in the near future. At least not within the next decade.
The expert links current promises to a broader problem of the Russian aviation industry: the launch dates of domestic aircraft have been repeatedly postponed, and previously announced plans for mass production have not been fully implemented. Therefore, in his estimation, the Indian agreements so far do not provide grounds to believe that dozens of Il-114-300s will indeed be delivered to carriers within the stated deadlines.