Getting Russia back into the global airliner market is obviously going to be hard going, but after visiting the country I think the Russians' prospects in helicopters are much better - and here's their next move.There was a hint of this while I was at Kazan when deputy director Igor Bugakov said there might be an announcement in the sub-2t class at the MAKS show. But Russian Helicopters boss Andrey Shibitov didn't even mention the Mi-34 in his briefing, so I was still quite surprised to see them announce that it's going back into production - this time with a Turbomeca Arrius 2F engine. It'll be called the Sapsan
The Mi-34 is roughly in the class of the Eurocopter EC-120 Colibri -
so at the light end of the market - but it's that end that Russia
regrets it didn't address years ago and which it is now trying to put
right. There's a video of the Mi-34 at last week's MAKS show here
(sorry, it's not embeddable - there are a couple of older Mi-34 movies
below.) Obviously the flying example and the one on the trolley aren't
the same, and I don't think any Western marketeer would have let the
media anywhere near a model being towed around. Still, the in-flight
aircraft looks pretty good and does the same sort of tricks as the
Colibri.
Russian Helicopters' announcement re Turbomeca is less than crystal clear but the plan appears to be to fire up the line producing Russian piston-powered helicopters in short order and get the Arrius-powered version up and running by 2011, which is going it a bit but do-able. It'll still be built at the Arsenyev Aviation plant as before (where it'll be a heck of a contrast with the Ka-50 Black Shark and Ka-52 Alligators gunships currently in some sort of production there.
In a sense this is all a bit of a distraction - nobody's going to get rich out of building this class of aircraft and it's things like the Kazan Helicopters Ansat which are targeting the real market - but I think the Russians see it as a way of getting a toe into the light helo market as quickly as possible.
Russian Helicopters' announcement re Turbomeca is less than crystal clear but the plan appears to be to fire up the line producing Russian piston-powered helicopters in short order and get the Arrius-powered version up and running by 2011, which is going it a bit but do-able. It'll still be built at the Arsenyev Aviation plant as before (where it'll be a heck of a contrast with the Ka-50 Black Shark and Ka-52 Alligators gunships currently in some sort of production there.
In a sense this is all a bit of a distraction - nobody's going to get rich out of building this class of aircraft and it's things like the Kazan Helicopters Ansat which are targeting the real market - but I think the Russians see it as a way of getting a toe into the light helo market as quickly as possible.
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