Unsold Superjet will be transferred to Red Wings

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ) liners, which were abandoned by foreign airlines, will be transferred to the Rostec-controlled carrier Red Wings. It is also known about the plans to purchase SSJ by the leasing company of Promsvyazbank.

For the unattached Superjet, which the last foreign customer refused in 2019, a new operator has been found. As RBC learned , Red Wings will receive 30 of the 59 aircraft, for which, for various reasons, there were no buyers. We are talking about both uncontracted aircraft and liners that were not delivered to the Mexican airline Interjet (it bought only 22 out of 30).

The cost of one aircraft transferred to Red Wings, according to a RBC source, will not exceed $30 million. That is, all 30 aircraft can cost $900 million. This is significantly lower than the catalog price of the SSJ-100 in 2018 - $50.5 million.

Other planes from those abandoned by foreigners will be handed over to Aeroflot (22 liners), the rest - to Azimut and Yakutia.

Deliveries may take two to three years, the source says: Red Wings will receive six aircraft in 2020, eight in 2021, and the rest in 2022. The company itself spoke of plans to receive 60 SSJs by 2024, as well as 16 MS-21 aircraft, but so far the decision has been made only about 30 aircraft.

The liners will be leased, there may be several lessors. In addition to working with the SSJ-100 of VEB-Leasing, STLC and Aviacapital Service, which is part of Rostec, PSB Leasing, owned by Promsvyazbank, claims for the deal. As Vedomosti reported on August 19, the authorities decided that Promsvyazbank would issue a loan for the purchase of 59 SSJ-100s, so it is logical that its own company will manage the leasing. If completed, it will become the largest owner of the SSJ-100 fleet. Now the leaders are VEB-Leasing (51 liners) and STLC (44 ships).

• In the summer of 2017, Vedomosti found out that the average Superjet flight time in the fleet of Russian airlines is two to three times lower than that of foreign aircraft - an average of 3-3.7 hours per day compared to 9 hours for Boeing and Airbus. At the end of 2018, the flights of seven SSJ-100s were stopped by the only European operator, the Irish Cityjet, due to a small raid caused by a shortage of spare parts. The planes were returned to the lessor.

• The Mexican Interjet at the beginning of operation showed a good flight time on the Superjet (up to 8–9 hours a day), but it was knocked down by the fall of the peso, the rise in the price of kerosene and its own management. From 2016–2017, Interjet stopped buying spare parts and moved to reduce the fleet.

• A little less than 200 aircraft produced in 11 years had problems with flight time, engines and spare parts, and now not a single foreign operator - more than a sad intermediate result for the first passenger aircraft developed in Russia since the Soviet era. Why the domestic liner did not live up to expectations, we explained in detail here.