Red Wings Airlines (WZ, Moscow Domodedovo) will take delivery of its first SSJ 100/95s before December 20 CEO Eugene Klyucharyov has told the RIA Novosti newswire. According to the ch-aviation aircraft database, the three aircraft are RA-89001 (msn 95008), RA-89002 (msn 95010) and RA-89021 (msn 95021) and were originally in service for the now defunct Moskovia Airlines (Zhukovsky).
"We started very substantive talks with Sukhoi Civil Aircraft (Zhukovsky) and got an offer to start cooperation by way of leasing. No lease finance, just leasing. Sukhoi still had planes that had recently returned from their original operators and so this was a very good option for us: to trial the aircraft under commercial conditions under operating lease," he said.
Red Wings is also set to take delivery of additional Tu-204s, as well as three ex-Aeroflot (SU, Moscow Sheremetyevo) Il-96s, for use on flights to Simferopol.
With European and US-sponsored sanctions on the country's financial services sector impacting local airlines ability to access cheap long term Western loans to finance aircraft leases and acquisitions, so Moscow has increasingly encouraged operators to use more locally-built aircraft such as the SSJ 100 and the Tu-204.
VEB Leasing, the leasing wing of Russia's Vnesheconombank (VEB), has also announced it will provide USD465million for the purchase of sixteen SSJ 100s by Russian airlines, with ten going to Aeroflot. The firm will also increase existing credit lines to advance the use of Russian aircraft in foreign markets up to USD2.5 billion.
In a related development, Russian Deputy Prime Minister and head of its Military-Industrial Commission, Dmitry Rogozin, confirmed plans to reactivate production of Il-112 and Il-114 turboprops at the VASO plant in Voronezh while discontinuing production of the An-148-100 built under licence from Ukraine's Antonov Design Bureau (Gostomel).
