Ukrainian airline bought Antonov planes in Russia
The new Ukrainian aviation company Air Ocean Airlines, founded last year, acquired the first two An-148 aircraft in Russia. According to the German resource Flug Revue, the first Antonov aircraft will be delivered to Ukraine in the near future.
Both An-148s were built ten years ago at the Voronezh aircraft plant VASO and still operated flights from Irkutsk, being part of the Russian regional airline "Angara". The owner of the aircraft is the leasing company Ilyushin Finance Co. (IFC).
Moldova acts as a third party in the deal between Ukraine and Russia, since after the events of 2014 air traffic between Moscow and Kiev was suspended. According to the aviation blogger Vladimir Belenky, both An-148s arrived in Chisinau at the end of August. According to representatives of the department, with the help of two Antonov aircraft, Air Ocean Airlines will be able to obtain an operator certificate.
The reasons for the purchase of the An-148 by Ukrainians lie in political и economic plane. Of the 47 An-148 (and An-158) built in the period from 2009 to 2018, only 12 were assembled in Ukraine, and 35 at VASO in Voronezh. Currently, there are only four aircraft of this type in Ukraine.
Until 2015, the An-148 program was run by the Russian-Ukrainian joint venture UAC-Antonov, but ultimately it became a victim of political disagreements between the two countries. While Antonov could not build new aircraft in Ukraine due to the lack of supplies of Russian components, Russian airlines using the An-148 suffered from a shortage of Ukrainian-made spare parts, in particular engines.
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