| [IMG=18541-4134] |
Although the debut civil plane ‘Sukhogo’ was designed for internal Russian routes, according to experts it has a number of advantages (for example, low noise emission), allowing to use them for European flights too. It was particularly noted by Nadejda Savina, commercial director of ‘Continental airlines’. Nevertheless, operators in Europe for which such planes on the market is interesting, are still cautiously talking about perspectives of using RRJ. Evgeniy Sudbin, head of the charter department in ‘Ascent travel’, says: ‘Nobody yet saw the plane so its possibilities are still not known very well. Besides there is a long time between signing the agreement and the actual usage of a plane. This plane has not even been tested. Anyway it is very hard to forecast anything in such deals – for example, ‘Transaero’ signed an agreement for ten TU-214, and what? In the best case it will receive two of them. So you can only guess’.
Meanwhile, signing an agreement about RRJ does not solve all renovation problems of ‘Aeroflot’ which needs to acquire new equipment now. Sergey Kharitonov, deputy general director of the airline company, says: ‘In the nearest time we plan to choose one of the used foreign planes to substitute TU-134.’ The company will be using them up until 2008.
In general, according to Kharitonov, the base of the renewed park of the national airline company will consist of two types of foreign planes – the range of planes of Airbus A320, and Boeing 767… So during 1.5 years ‘Aeroflot’ is planning to buy 12 planes of A320 and 2-5 Boeings 767.
