MOSCOW, November 26. /ITAR-TASS/. Vice-premier Dmitry Rogozin has put forward an initiative suggesting that Russian state-run airlines should buy Russian-made aircraft. Rogozin spoke at a conference of an interdepartmental working group which discussed measures of state support for production and sale of civil aircraft.
"We have been convincing private airline companies to buy Russian-made aircraft, whereas state-run companies are reluctant to buy them, he said. "We need a resolution to this effect, which they should comply with," Rogozin added, addressing the director general of Ilyushin's finance company, Alexander Rubtsov, heading the working group.
“The proposal applies to planes of the VIP class as well,” Rogozin said. The initiative applied equally to all other import-substitution projects which envisaged providing Russian airlines with modern, economic aircraft of high quality instead of old, used imported planes. This would ensure flight safety, Rogozin said.
But Angara airline Director General Anatoly Yurtayev told the meeting that flights to local airports with airstrips accounted for 40 percent of passenger movements. Foreign variants of Russia's AN-24 aircraft were not suitable for such operations, he said.
Yurtayev praised the An-48, available from among the Angara fleet. These had performed well for carrying shift workers employed by oil and gas companies, he said.