While Ural Airlines has disclosed plans to extend the service life of Airbus A320-family aircraft, the airframer states that it is not supporting any such efforts by Russian operators.
Ural Airlines recently revealed that it is planning to undertake work to extend the life of A320-family jets to more than 96,000h.
Airbus has a programme – known as Extended Service Goal – to increase the single-aisle type’s operational life.
But it says it is “not supporting” any ESG effort for aircraft registered in Russia.
“Any supply of service bulletins or retrofit parts has stopped since the embargo [imposed by the European Union],” the airframer states.
It is unclear whether Ural Airlines’ programme, carried out through its aviation technical centre, is intended solely for its own fleet or whether it will cover third-party aircraft.
The ESG programme for the A320, initiated in 2007, enables operators to increase the safe airworthiness life from 60,000h to 120,000h – and raise the number of cycles from 48,000 to 60,000.
This offers the potential for 10-20 years’ additional service from the airframe.
Airbus had originally planned a further phase of the programme, known as ESG II, which would have potentially taken the aircraft life up to 180,000h.
But the airframer backed away from the plan around the time that the A320neo entered service, having considered that the revenue benefit to operators did not justify the cost of modification.
