The Baikal passenger planes being created in Russia will not be able to carry passengers. As Izvestia writes , the first Baikal aircraft (LMS-901), which are scheduled for release in 2025, will be used only for various aerial work, for example, forest protection or air ambulance flights. This was told to Izvestia by a source in the Far Eastern airline Aurora, to which these aircraft are to be delivered. The Ministry of Industry and Trade reported that work on the aircraft is being carried out according to the schedule, and in the basic configuration it will be certified at the end of this year.
An independent aviation expert, speaking to The Insider on condition of anonymity, said that Russia has not yet created a domestic engine and is forced to use foreign-made engines, which are not enough for passenger traffic.
“This aircraft has no domestic engine. Some VK-800S does not yet exist in nature, it is only being developed. It is clear that testing and certification of the engine is still far away. Now on it [the plane] is a General Electric H80-200, which is an updated Czech Walter 601 of Czech production. The screw there is also either Canadian or American catalog. On-board radio electronic equipment (avionics) is Garmin and Honeywell, because there is no on-board equipment of their own. Most likely, the previously acquired avionics, propellers and engines are not enough to start supplying aircraft in such quantities that they can begin to carry passengers. This number of aircraft is enough to carry out the work of aviation forest protection and agricultural aviation. And in order to have something to report on, they will make several aircraft, hand them over to Aurora and say: “Look, we have made a new aircraft to replace the An-2,” and then they will either do their own as soon as possible, or they will look for ways to bypass sanctions all foreign components to receive.
The expert notes that fuel efficiency has not yet been calculated for this aircraft, which is completely different for an aircraft carrying passengers and an aircraft that pollinates fields.
“The Russian aviation region has crap even with a light aircraft and is now trying to smooth out all the negativity in this way. As for certification, now it is undergoing certification with a foreign propeller, foreign avionics and a foreign engine. Then it will be re-certified with all imported equipment,” the aviation expert notes.
At the end of August 2019, the management of the Ural Civil Aviation Plant (UZGA) announced the start of work on the creation of a domestic nine-seat light multi-purpose aircraft (LMS) to replace the An-2. Especially for the new project, the Baikal-Engineering company was created, which worked in close cooperation with the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI).