Vaso is official. Voronezh Aviation Plant: history and modernity. Participation in associations

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Open Joint Stock Company "Voronezh Joint Stock Aircraft Manufacturing Company" is the legal successor of the Voronezh Aviation Production Association, created in 1932 and transformed in 1993 into an Open Joint Stock Company.

The history of the Company dates back to March 1932. Being a state enterprise, undergoing certain changes in the name ("aircraft plant", "mailbox", "production association") the plant was engaged exclusively in the construction of aircraft, developing and improving as aviation technology developed and improved. In the pre-war period, the plant mastered 11 types of aircraft designed by A.N. Tupolev, A.S. Moskalev, S.I. Ilyushin, V.G. Ermolaev.

The first-born of the enterprise in 1932-1934. became the TB-3 heavy bomber. Then they assembled the ANT-25 (1934-1936), which set a number of world records, and the SAM-5 (1933) and SAM-7 (1936) passenger aircraft.

In 1940, the plant staff mastered the production of IL-2 attack aircraft, sending 15,099 of these aircraft to the fronts of World War II.

In October 1941, the plant was evacuated to Kuibyshev. On January 25, 1943, Voronezh was liberated, the plant returned from evacuation and began production of components for previously produced aircraft in parallel with the repair of aircraft equipment.

In 1947, the company began production of IL-10 attack aircraft, and two years later - the first serial jet bomber in the USSR, IL-28. In 1954, production of TU-16 bombers began, and by the end of the 1950s, the company’s staff was entrusted with the production of AN-10 and AN-12 aircraft. Then the plant built a series of supersonic heavy interceptors TU-128.

In September 1993, the company was transformed into an Open Joint Stock Company.

Today JSC VASO is one of the largest aircraft manufacturing enterprises in the Russian Federation.

JSC VASO, in accordance with the rules of the IAC aviation register, passed certification of the entire production complex, officially formalizing the right to produce wide-body IL-96 aircraft in accordance with international standards and to extend the service life of the IL-86 airliner.

The enterprise's capacity and flexible production preparation system make it possible to simultaneously produce several aircraft modifications, including those using American and European norms and standards.

The Company has carried out a set of measures to bring the quality management system in accordance with the requirements of GOST R ISO 9001-2001, which made it possible to obtain a conclusion that certifies the existence of conditions that ensure the fulfillment of the state defense order. The company carries out all types of warranty work, after-sales service, and also carries out repairs and maintenance of aircraft after flying 10,000 hours. The company has a certificate from the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia to perform aircraft maintenance.

As part of the development of international cooperation in the field of aircraft manufacturing, the Company’s quality management system received a positive assessment from Airbus auditors, which made it possible to conclude a contract for the manufacture of individual components of A320 aircraft in Voronezh.

The Company has created a corporate information network that allows solving problems of prompt processing of design and technological documentation, accounting of financial and economic activities, and the use of all-Russian, regional and industry reference and consulting systems.

Based on a unified information model, experience has been accumulated in electronic design and launch of units into production, which has made it possible to significantly shorten the cycle of technological preparation of production. Today, design and technological preparation for the production of IL-96, Superjet-100, AN-148, IL-112V aircraft is carried out using electronic product models.

The Voronezh Aviation Plant - also known as the Voronezh Joint-Stock Aircraft Manufacturing Company - is one of the most famous. At different times, it brought the city both the glory of its best engineers and shame for the work done.

History of the enterprise

Aviation has a truly great history. For almost 90 years it has been producing aircraft for the needs of the state. It was created at the dawn of Soviet industry and erected in record time.

During that period, mainly military aircraft were produced. The company produced IL-2 attack aircraft and IL-4 bombers. However, the Voronezh Aviation Plant did not limit itself to military products - the plant assembled the legendary ANT-25, on which Soviet pilots flew record distances.

During the war, the plant had to be evacuated to Samara, but even during the evacuation the plant produced more than 35,000 attack aircraft, which made a worthy contribution to the victory of the USSR in the war, and allowed the plant to receive the Order of Lenin.

In 1993, the plant fell into private hands, and since then the necessity of its existence has been constantly questioned. The state eventually began to control the controlling stake, but this did not bring greater stability to the enterprise.

The Voronezh aviation plant experienced mass layoffs, balancing on the brink of bankruptcy, and large-scale government contracts. What will happen to the company next? This question remains open.

Work at the Voronezh Aircraft Plant

Factory employees respond differently to their work. Basically, workers put forward a number of complaints regarding working conditions and equipment. Let's talk about them in more detail:

• despite the fact that VASO produces civil aviation for the top officials of the state, at the enterprise you can find machines captured during the Great Patriotic War;
• shower rooms do not always work, and sanitary facilities have not been repaired for decades;
• In winter, the workshops can get quite cold.

The average salary at the plant for ordinary professions ranges from 20 to 30 thousand rubles.

Financial crisis

From a financial point of view, the Voronezh Aviation Plant is in a state of protracted crisis. Every year, the company’s management publishes financial statements, according to which VASO incurs colossal losses - more than 1 billion rubles. Such indicators are depressing even by the standards of large state-owned industrial companies.

The reasons for this development can only be guessed at. Economic experts annually open extensive debates, trying to understand why the plant is loaded with government orders, production is operating at full capacity, but the enterprise is still incurring colossal losses.

According to media reports, from 2019 there is a possibility that production of a number of airliner models will cease, which means that VASO may lose up to 30% of its annual income. So there is no need to think about a positive perspective.

Scandalous cases

The last few years have become critical for the reputation of the Voronezh Aviation Plant. In 2011, 6 people died as a result of equipment malfunctions: during a test, the plane broke up in the air.

And already in 2018, the whole country shuddered from the terrible news - another plane produced at the Voronezh Aircraft Plant crashed. According to the VASO press service, the aircraft has exhausted only a quarter of its intended life.

It is difficult to predict what will happen to the plant next. The fact that the enterprise requires large-scale modernization is clear to almost everyone who has touched the topic of industry. Will we see any steps to save the historical industrial center of Voronezh or will the plant go bankrupt and die? We still have to find out the answer to this question.

The Voronezh aircraft manufacturing business is over 80 years old. Its central supporting element, the focus of intellectual, technological and human resources, is the Voronezh Aviation Aircraft Association (VASO), which, despite the difficulties of the last two decades, continues to be a source of pride for all segments of the population of the city and region.

The origins of the Voronezh Aviation Plant took place in the early 1930s, when the country was just beginning to recover after the civil war, eliminating devastation and hunger. It should be noted that a fairly significant part of the population was illiterate, and the majority of Voronezh residents used horse-drawn transport as the main method of transportation and cargo transportation. And the population of Voronezh itself by 1928 was only 120 thousand people, a third of whom left the villages and became city dwellers in the last decade.

It would seem that in Voronezh there were no conditions for launching such an innovative production as aircraft manufacturing - after all, the region had always been agricultural, there were no technical universities here at that time, and there was no aviation infrastructure of any kind.

However, the country's communist leadership decided to use Lenin's principle of the “leading link,” according to which, by pulling one link, the entire chain can be pulled out. In practical terms, this meant that by establishing aviation production in Voronezh, it would be possible over time to create an aviation technical university on a local basis (one of the city districts is called VAI, i.e. Voronezh Aviation Institute, which was supposed to be adjacent to the plant ), airfield infrastructure, and build scientific and engineering potential.

Looking ahead, let's say that the plan of the country's leadership was then completely justified - in fact, all the assigned tasks were solved - a plant was built that began to produce military aircraft, a technical university was opened (which would later become Polytechnic, instead of the planned VAI), a staff of qualified workers, engineers and technicians (to which a whole galaxy of test pilots and ground service personnel were later added).

Subsequently, in 1950, VATU, the Voronezh Aviation Technical School, will begin its work in Voronezh, which will begin to train military specialists for ground services and technical support of aircraft. In August 1975, by the Directive of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, the secondary aviation technical school would be transformed into the Voronezh Higher Military Aviation Engineering School, which will significantly strengthen the personnel potential of the Voronezh region in the field of aviation equipment and ground infrastructure.

But all this will happen later, in the post-war period. And then, during the NEP period, when the country was just planning the production of high-quality aircraft, there was only enthusiasm and a desire to work hard. In 1929, the Council of Labor and Defense made a decision on the construction of the Voronezh aircraft plant (on October 16, 1929, the decision of the STO approved the plan for the construction of the Voronezh aircraft plant “B”), in 1930 construction began (on January 4, 1930, by order of the People’s Commissariat of Military Industry instead of the index “B” The enterprise was given the name “Aviation Plant No. 18”), and by March 1932 the plant was put into operation.

Plant management at the head of the column at the demonstration. Revolution Avenue. Voronezh. 1930s

As you can see, the pace of construction was rapid - approximately the same as during the construction, which was built in 13 months. Approximately the same period of 14 months was needed for the builders to launch the main production of the aircraft plant. Here, of course, it is necessary to clarify that this was not the plant that we are used to seeing now. We are talking about just a few workshops, which to a modern observer will seem like very modest structures, not comparable in scale to the existing conglomerates, airfield and infrastructure.

The first copy of the SAM-5 aircraft. Built in 1933

But the times were different, and the complexity of the tasks with extremely limited resources was different. At construction sites, manual labor predominated, using labor mechanization tools - mainly picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and stretchers. But work enthusiasm and hard work did their job - the plant was launched in the shortest possible time and began producing the first aircraft.

In September 1934, the first test flight of the TB-3, the first production aircraft assembled at the Voronezh aircraft plant, took place. The plane was lifted into the sky by test pilot M.M. Gromov, later a famous Soviet military leader, Hero of the Soviet Union. At the same time, in 1934, the equipment of the fuselage, center section, and final assembly workshops was completed. K.A. was appointed chief designer of plant No. 18. Kalinin (1887-1937).

Plant workers took part in laying tram tracks in the Stalinsky (as the Left Bank region was called at that time). The branch of the regional flying club at the aircraft plant trained 50 glider pilots and 28 pilots. The factory village had 3 thousand inhabitants, all houses were electrified.

In 1935, a chemical laboratory and the first stage of a galvanic coating and oxidation workshop were put into operation. By the end of the year there were 200 Stakhanovites at the plant.

In January 1936, a new factory club was opened. Assembly of the experimental tailless bomber K-12 designed by K.A. has begun. Kalinina. In the same year, 1936, preparations began for the production of long-range DB-3 bombers (see photo above).

In August 1937, 7 stores were opened in the Stalinsky (Levoberezhny) district, and new bus and tram lines began operating on the route Aviazovod - Dynamo Stadium. In December 1937, construction of the conveyor building was completed.

In January 1938, a new factory clinic was opened.

In February 1938, there were 1,472 Stakhanovites at the enterprise; of these, 93 people exceeded the norm three times.

On May 29, 1940, Resolution No. 236 of the Defense Committee of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was signed, according to which Plant No. 18 was instructed to begin serial production of DB-240 (Er-2) bombers designed by V.G. Ermolaeva (1909-1944).

On December 14, 1940, People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry of the USSR A.I. Shakhurin signed an order for the preparation of production and serial production of the Il-2 attack aircraft. On March 10, the head of the flight test station (FLS) K.K. Rykov took off the first production Il-2 attack aircraft from the plant’s airfield. Only three months passed from receiving the attack aircraft drawings from the Ilyushin Design Bureau to the release of the first vehicle.

On April 12, 1941, People's Commissar A.I. Shakhurin signed order No. 330 to stop production of DB-3 aircraft at plant No. 18. In total, about 1 thousand DB-3 saloons of various modifications rolled off the Voronezh stocks.

Before the start of the Great Patriotic War, Voronezh aircraft manufacturers mastered the production of 11 new types of aircraft designed by Antonov, Tupolev, Ilyushin, Ermolaev, and Moskalev. It is now even difficult for our contemporaries to understand that atmosphere of creativity, enthusiasm, desire for a new life, experiments and rationalization of production. A huge part of the youth wanted to become pilots, members of Osoaviakhim, to be national heroes useful to their homeland. Young people looked with delight at the crews of Chkalov and Gromov flying to the USA via the North Pole.

On June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began. The next day, by order of the head of the Voronezh garrison, Voronezh and the surrounding areas were declared a danger zone of air attack. Self-defense units were created at plant No. 18, and work was announced in two 11-hour shifts. In June 1941, the aircraft plant produced 159 Il-2 attack aircraft.

During the period of hostilities and even before the Nazis captured the right bank part of Voronezh, the aircraft plant was evacuated. At the beginning of October 1941, a decision was made to evacuate the plant to the Bezymenka station, twenty kilometers from Kuibyshev.

During the war years, factory workers produced Il-2 attack aircraft, which is commemorated by the monument to the famous aircraft located on the square near the VASO entrance (see photo).

In 1943, the regional administration of the construction materials industry prepared a certificate for the Voronezh regional executive committee about the damage caused to the plant during the fighting: “Seven workshops burned down, one hangar, three workshops were destroyed by bombing. The main workshops have been preserved. With an average repair, the plant can begin repairing aircraft.”

On April 2, 1943, by order of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry No. 185c, an aircraft repair plant No. 64 was organized on the premises of the former plant No. 18.

From March to August 1943, aircraft of the 586th Female Fighter Aviation Regiment were based at the factory airfield.

In 1943, 218 Il-2 aircraft were repaired at the plant; 25 U-2 aircraft; 30 Yak-1 aircraft; 14 La-5 aircraft; 4 Pe-2 aircraft; 2 Yak-6 aircraft; 4 Yak-9 aircraft; one Ut-2 and one Li-2. By the end of the year, the following workshops were operating: aggregate, mechanical, tool, and welding. Training for the plant began in the restored FZU school.

In 1945, the plant's machine park expanded. The workshops are equipped with equipment exported from Germany and satellite countries as part of reparations - metal-cutting machines, hydraulic presses from Fritz Müller, Lake Ireland and other companies. The machine shop was equipped with captured equipment. Residential buildings on Heroes of the Stratosphere Street have been restored. The factory workers restored 6.4 km of the tram line on the left bank; A tram was put on the route with the inscription “To our native Voronezh from the staff of plant No. 64 on the day of victory over Japan.”

On January 24, 1946, Plant No. 64 was given the task of receiving equipment and technical documentation for the Il-10 aircraft from Plant No. 1 and organizing the production of Il-10 aircraft components: wings, empennage, crutch installation, landing gear with fairings, rear fuselage compartment, fuel and oil tanks, metal tail sections of the Il-2 fuselage, to ensure the production of 10 Il-10 aircraft in the fourth quarter of 1946.

In 1948, the restoration of the first stage of the plant was completed. In 1950, workshop No. 45 was organized for processing magnesium casting parts. The plant received an order for major repairs and re-equipment of Il-12 aircraft. During the year, Voronezh aircraft manufacturers modernized 114 aircraft of this type. At the same time, in 1950, the first four Il-28 front-line bombers rolled off the stocks of plant No. 64.

In 1953, the main building of the plant was completely restored. Building 70 was restored and put into operation, in which a workshop for the production of consumer goods was located.

In 1954, the plant completed the IL-28 assembly program. Preparations have begun for the production of Tu-16 long-range jet bombers.

At the end of the 1950s, the aircraft plant began production of the first domestic wide-body turboprop aircraft designed by O.K. Antonov; passenger "AN-10" Ukraine" and transport-landing "AN-12". It was with them that the participation of factory aviation equipment at international exhibitions and salons began. The An-10 took off for the first time from the factory airfield on November 5, 1957. On June 1, 1960, Resolution No. 601-246 of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was signed on the organization of serial production of An-12 military transport aircraft at factories No. 64 of the Voronezh SNK and No. 84 of the Tashkent SNK.

In 1964, the plant began serial production of the Tu-123 unmanned aerial vehicle.

Since the mid-1960s, specialists from the Voronezh Aviation Plant, together with the Tupolev Design Bureau, began working on the TU-144 supersonic passenger aircraft. Designers and aircraft manufacturers from the USA and Europe worked on similar projects. And if the United States considered this idea commercially unprofitable, the Anglo-French consortium brought the idea to completion, which was embodied in the Concorde project.

Now it is not easy for us to understand why the Soviet government needed such an expensive and commercially unattractive project as a passenger jet capable of breaking the supersonic barrier. Such a business requires special materials (for example, titanium housings, since aluminum alloys are not able to withstand extreme flight conditions), airfield strips and services. And this is not to mention the cost of flights, which are 3-4 times higher than the cost of flights on turboprop aircraft. Obviously, a Soviet person with a small income could not pay such costs. Therefore, the Tu-144 project was most likely an image project - approximately the same as the Buran project, made according to the type of American space shuttles. Having made only one unmanned flight, Buran took its place at VDNKh.

To be fair, it must be said that the Concorde project was not able to prove its financial viability. After a number of years of operation and a tragedy on the runway, the Concorde was closed and all business associated with it was liquidated.

The story of the Voronezh TU-144, which crashed at an exhibition in Le Bourget in front of thousands of observers, also ended tragically. Perhaps the plane was interfered with by a French escort fighter. It is also possible that the crew commander's camera fell and the steering wheel jammed. But be that as it may, the production of this beautiful and high-tech machine was curtailed at the Voronezh plant. The last aircraft of this series was produced in October 1984.

Returning to the mid-1970s, we note that on July 1, 1972, the Voronezh Aviation Plant was visited by the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Fidel Castro, who inspected the interior and cockpit of the Tu-144 airliner.

Aircraft factory workers awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor(1981). Left: Lyalin Egor Filippovich, foreman of assembly fitters; on right: Khudyakov Pyotr Yakovlevich, foreman of assembly fitters

On April 27, 1976, an order was issued to the plant to begin serial production of Il-86 airbuses. The production of aircraft was accompanied by technical re-equipment of the enterprise. Press riveting was increased to 60%, stocks were introduced to complete the upper and lower panels for the full wing span, 640 thousand units of special tools were manufactured, etching of titanium alloys was established, a new refrigeration chamber was put into operation to improve the quality of processing of power units made of high-strength stainless steels, a new assembly shop with an area of ​​48 thousand sq.m. was built.

On March 25, 1980, by order No. 122 of the Minister of Aviation Industry of the USSR, the Voronezh Aviation Production Association was created on the basis of the Voronezh Aviation Plant and a branch of NIAT. And on December 26, 1980, the Il-86 airbus with passengers on board made its first flight on the Moscow-Tashkent route. Regular operation of the Il-86 on air routes began (since July 1981, the Il-86 began to carry out international transportation).

In 1986, VAPO, together with the Ilyushin Design Bureau, began creating a pilot batch of Il-96-300 aircraft for ground testing and certification. 15.3 thousand square meters of housing were built using self-sustaining methods.

In May 1987, to help the village, the association began producing KSS-2.6 forage harvesters.

In April 1990, the first flight was made on the Il-96-300 airbus on the route Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - Khabarovsk - Moscow. The association transitioned to an operating mode with a five-day work week without working Saturdays.

With the collapse of the USSR and the transition to a market economy, the Voronezh aircraft plant began to have serious problems. The reason for this was the most difficult external conditions - inflation in 1992 exceeded 2500%, decreasing in 1993 to 700%. Normal funding for the plant ceased, and employee salaries began to be delayed for several months. Specialists began to quit, go to other enterprises or private businesses.

At the same time, Russian carriers began to buy fewer and fewer vehicles, turning to foreign manufacturers who could offer used equipment or leasing schemes. The Voronezh plant could not offer such conditions. The factory workers had to survive by manufacturing by-products - small aircraft, boats, cans, baby strollers and even upholstered furniture (see photo below).

However, the main business of the plant, which became a joint-stock company and began to be called VASO, has stalled since the early 1990s. All prime ministers and presidents of the country who have been in power since then visited VASO and promised their assistance at the legislative, financial and moral level. However, not many serious real actions were taken, and many of them were late. There were even proposals to repurpose VASO, making it an appendage of Boeing or Airbus, which would manufacture individual components (which it is now doing) and carry out repairs on the existing aircraft fleet.

Consumer products that the aircraft plant offered to trade in the late 1990s - early 2000s

There are no final decisions yet. Most likely, VASO’s business will begin to operate at full speed with legislative and financial support from the country’s government. And after the necessary impulses, it will switch to independent entrepreneurial activity - like the Canadian Bombardier or the Brazilian Embraer, which firmly occupy their niches and are optimistic about the future.

Directors of the Voronezh Aviation Plant:

Lyakhovsky K.S. (1930-1933);

Medvedev M.D. (1933);

Klevtsov P.A. (1933-1934);

Chernyshov V.N. (1934-1937);

Shabashvili S.M. (1937);

Shenkman M.B. (1938-1942);

Serdyuk V.K. (1943-1944);

Smirnov V.N. (1944-1955);

Belyak K.N. (1955-1957);

Belyavsky G.A. (1957-1965);

Danilov B.M. (1965-1975);

Shumeiko A.G. (1975-1976);

Mikhailov A.G. (1976-1998);

Salikov V.A. (1998-2005);

Shushpanov M.N. (2006-2008);

Zubarev V.Yu. (since 2008).

Literature:

Voronezh wings. Chronicle of the history of the Voronezh Aviation Plant. - Voronezh, 2012. - 32 p.

This year VASO is to deliver three Il-96s. Two have already been delivered - Il-96-300 by order of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation and Il-96-400 in the interests of the Ministry of Defense.

The press hastened to dub the Ministry of Defense the “Doomsday Plane,” but this is not entirely true. In the West, this nickname was given to air command posts (ACP), aircraft from which during a “special period” it is possible to control the Armed Forces of the state. Of course, this plane is also loaded with special equipment, including communication systems, but it is intended mainly for the comfortable transportation of department heads. If necessary, it can be used in the transfer of personnel of the Russian Armed Forces. The operation in Syria showed that there is never too much military transport aviation.

A dozen An-124 Ruslan heavy trucks are just coping with the transfer of heavy equipment and helicopters to the Khmeimim airbase. Here is what we managed to learn from Dmitry Prishvin, recently appointed general director of VASO, about the future of our Airbus:

– A government contract for four passenger aircraft should be signed in August. We have already started building them, albeit with borrowed money. We are confident that funding will be available on time. The first of these machines should be delivered in June 2018. We will also build a prototype Il-96-400M aircraft, which we will transfer to AK Ilyushin at the end of 2019 for certification tests. A country like ours must have its own long-range widebody.

Il-96-400M is a major modernization of our only wide-body long-haul airliner, which is currently underway at the Ilyushin company. The designers promise that modern materials and avionics will allow the aircraft to seriously shed excess fat, while the number of passengers, due to a longer, almost 10-meter, cabin, will exceed 400 people. In this case, experts believe, the aircraft will look very attractive against the background of Western competitors.

It should be added that this work does not at all contradict the plans of the UAC and the Ministry of Industry and Trade to create a joint Russian-Chinese wide-body airliner. Some know-how will probably flow there from the Il-96 - the key technologies for designing wide-body aircraft are now owned by only a few states: Russia, the USA and the Europeans from Airbus. But the production of this completely new aircraft is planned in China, and its creation, including engines for it with a thrust of 30–35 tons, is a matter of the relatively distant future. Evil tongues say that in the PD-35 project (“Advanced Engine-35”) the number “35” in the engine name does not indicate the engine’s thrust in tons, but the year of its expected creation.

Today, according to the general director of VASO, the plant has the capacity to assemble two Il-96s per year. Therefore, it is still difficult to talk about mass serial production. But what the hell isn’t it, here in Voronezh, we rented out an Il-86 aircraft of the same size every month and a half. Dmitry Prishvin believes that in the case of a serious long-term contract, the plant can quickly reach the annual production of six airliners per year:

– This is a good load and a comfortable figure for us. There will be no need to build any additional space. Preparation will be required - additional stocks for the production of the wing and fuselage. And technical re-equipment in procurement, aggregate and machining production. Everything is worth about 4.5 billion rubles - not global money. Another question is why and for what kind of tricks did the government fools try to put an end to the plane? Viktor Khristenko especially distinguished himself during his years at the helm of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Together with Reus, today he is passionate about the game for millionaires - golf. What can I say?

New winds are blowing in the FSB - the scoundrels have begun to be arrested. Isn’t it time to find out from whose voice they sang and from whose hands all those gentlemen who became fabulously rich while driving the Russian aviation industry to the brink of death were fed?

IL-112V – work is in full swing

The huge areas of workshops and the clutter of equipment create the misleading impression that people have left the aircraft plant. Or is it that there is an eternal lunch break at the plant and only rare enthusiasts try to do something? In fact, six and a half thousand people regularly come on shift.

In February 2017 (very soon!) the first airframe of the light military transport aircraft Il-112V will be ready, and it will be sent to the final assembly shop. This is what Dmitry Prishvin says: “We are working as hard as we can, there is no doubt about it.”

In the workshop, the work is indeed in full swing, the fuselage compartment is covered with assemblers (mostly from the inside, they are also almost invisible from the outside), they don’t even look at the correspondent - that’s not the point. The documentation for the aircraft is presented almost completely; on the general director’s wall, construction schedules occupy the entire wall. And on June 30 next year, the transport aircraft must be rolled out onto the runway.

How long they waited, stopped the project, stopped funding! Now we have to hurry. The Il-112V must replace the veterans of the An-24 and An-26 air routes, which have practically reached the end of their service life.

Tail compartment of the first Voronezh Il-112V aircraft / (c) Arguments of the week

By February 17th, the United Engine Corporation (UEC) promises to supply engines. Will they make it? Everything is on the edge, but this is exactly how the Soviet aviation industry once worked. In any case, someone at UEC has to remember that the purpose of being in the leadership chair is not hilling golf courses, which is what Reus, who was fired from here, did, but very specific things, including aircraft engines.

Dozens of suppliers of components are not asleep today, from Ulyanovsk to Kazan. When parts manufactured using digital technologies began to arrive for assembly, the old craftsmen were puzzled for some time - nothing had to be adjusted. This is a consequence of the translation of design and working documentation into digital and an increase in the share of modern processing complexes in production. And the staff is clearly younger - the period of solid gray heads has now been replaced by mixed colors. Very young guys are tinkering with laser measuring equipment. At the control panel of a CNC machine, a very young guy is reading something (instructions, probably). Meanwhile, the processing complex does its job.

A number of parts made of composite materials are supplied to the Superjet in Komsomolsk-on-Amur from Voronezh. Engine nacelles and pylons for the promising MS-21 are also made here and sent to Irkutsk. It is correct and logical - to do, as the general director says, a “collective farm” at each aircraft plant is senselessly expensive. There is an Aviastar-SP plant in Ulyanovsk, which has prepared the production of certain fuselage parts - they make them for both Voronezh and Irkutsk. This means saving money on high-tech equipment and maximizing its utilization. And in the opposite direction, pylons and engine nacelles for the Il-76MD-90A are again traveling to Aviastar-SP from Voronezh - reasonable horizontal cooperation is being built. Therefore, representative offices of factories and design bureaus from all over the country work here on a permanent basis.

The article is published with abbreviations.