The Siberian Aeronautical Research Institute (SibNIA) has received the status of An-2 developer and can now modernize the Soviet biplane. However, the aircraft will simply not be allowed into the European market, explained aviation engineer Valery Ageev.
He reminded that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) suspended the certificates of all Russian companies back in 2022 as part of sanctions.
SibNIA will not receive a new certificate in the foreseeable future. As funny as it sounds, the road to Europe for the modernized 'corn-duster' is closed for a long time, if not forever.
Recall that currently the rights to the An-2 belong to Airbus Military. How the biplane ended up in such a situation — read in the detailed material of «Pervy Tekhnichesky». However, in Russia, SibNIA was granted the right to modernize the biplane, including changing the Soviet piston engine ASH-62, explained the head of Rosaviatsiya, Dmitry Yadrov.
The results are already known — the modernized An-2 with an American TPE-331 engine reduced its takeoff run by 3 times — 50 m instead of 150 m. In the future, the biplane will receive a domestic power plant with 1600 hp, promised the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade.