Photo: UAC
The global health issue has completely changed the way we travel, and airlines know this best. Air travel demand has collapsed as more countries entered a lockdown, and airlines are still struggling to find a way to convince people it’s still safe to board a plane despite the pandemic.
As the number of passengers fell significantly in the last 12 months or so, Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation, or UAC, finally figured out that one of their projects makes little sense.
It’s the Il-96-400M, Russia’s long-haul passenger aircraft that the country planned to build as a response to Airbus and Boeing.
The wide-body passenger airliner was supposed to have over 400 seats, thus becoming one of the biggest aircraft of its kind. The original specifications have been impressive, to say the least, as UAC wanted the aircraft to have enough room for 402 passengers and fly for no less than 8,750 km.
At one point, the engineers were working on a prototype that pushed these figures even higher, bringing the total number of passengers to 430 and the maximum range to 10,000 kilometers.
But according to the Russian newspaper Vedomosti, there’s no demand for such an aircraft, which, to be honest, isn’t necessarily surprising given the current trends that we talked about earlier. Since nobody wants to buy the Il-96-400M, UAC will just give up on the development, not before building two different units to be delivered to Rossiya Airlines and be used for Russian government officials, including maybe even Vladimir Putin.
“There are no orders from airlines, and since wide-body airliners worldwide are grounded due to COVID-19 pandemic, there are no plans to mass-produce the Il-96-400M,” a spokesperson for Russian deputy prime minister Yuri Borisov was quoted as saying by the cited source.
Work on the airplane started in February 2017, and the Il-96-400M was scheduled to take off for the first time by the end of this year.
It’s the Il-96-400M, Russia’s long-haul passenger aircraft that the country planned to build as a response to Airbus and Boeing.
The wide-body passenger airliner was supposed to have over 400 seats, thus becoming one of the biggest aircraft of its kind. The original specifications have been impressive, to say the least, as UAC wanted the aircraft to have enough room for 402 passengers and fly for no less than 8,750 km.
At one point, the engineers were working on a prototype that pushed these figures even higher, bringing the total number of passengers to 430 and the maximum range to 10,000 kilometers.
But according to the Russian newspaper Vedomosti, there’s no demand for such an aircraft, which, to be honest, isn’t necessarily surprising given the current trends that we talked about earlier. Since nobody wants to buy the Il-96-400M, UAC will just give up on the development, not before building two different units to be delivered to Rossiya Airlines and be used for Russian government officials, including maybe even Vladimir Putin.
“There are no orders from airlines, and since wide-body airliners worldwide are grounded due to COVID-19 pandemic, there are no plans to mass-produce the Il-96-400M,” a spokesperson for Russian deputy prime minister Yuri Borisov was quoted as saying by the cited source.
Work on the airplane started in February 2017, and the Il-96-400M was scheduled to take off for the first time by the end of this year.
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