Azernews.Az

By Nigar Abbasova

President of Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) Jahangir Askerov has announced that Azerbaijan is interested in assembling the Ukrainian transport aircraft An-178 with a carrying capacity of up to 18 tons at own production facilities.

"On behalf of the government I am authorized to say that Azerbaijan is interested in assembling An-178 on the country’s territory," he told reporters on June 6, Interfax reported.

Askerov said that the Kyiv-based Antonov State Enterprise and Azerbaijan's Silk Way Airlines signed a contract in May 2015 to assembly 10 transport aircraft An-178 in Ukraine and ship them to the airlines.

The first two planes are to be delivered by late 2018 under the contract and eight planes will be shipped upon a mutual agreement of the parties.

"We hope that by the middle of 2018 when we receive the first plane, production facilities [for assembling An-178 in Azerbaijan] would be ready," he added.

The Ukrainian enterprise reported that Silk Way Airlines will become the first customer for the AN-178.

Antonov State Enterprise President Mikhail Gvozdev mentioned that the plans to expand cooperation under the An-178 program worked out with Azerbaijan do not stipulate the sale of An-178 technologies to the foreign partner.

“This is cooperation production. The plane will be finally assembled in Azerbaijan,” he said.

The Antonov AN-178 is a short-range medium-airlift military-transport aircraft. The aircraft has already fulfilled 77 landings but the trial process is still underway. The plane was produced via computer-aided design and engineering and can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

One of the most fundamental differences of the AN-178 aircraft from the previous ones in the replacement of four-engined turboprop by two-engined. Twin-jet provides much higher efficiency on a route as compared to a four turboprop-powered transport aircraft owing to almost 40 percent higher speed.

The Antonov State Enterprise is currently considered to be one of the few enterprises, running the complete development cycle of advanced aircraft — from preliminary design to construction, testing, certification, production and integrated logistic support.

Azerbaijan Airlines is a major air carrier and one of the leaders of the aviation community of CIS countries. AZAL with the newest airplane fleets, consisting of 25 airplanes, does not have a single old plane.

Silk Way Airlines is a cargo airline with its head office and flight operations at Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku. It operates freight services linking Europe and Asia, as well as services for government and non-governmental organizations.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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