A SkyExpress plane landing at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow
Photo:
| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
Aeroflot Lands at Vnukovo
// It founds engine repair venture with SNECMA and VARZ-400
Aeroflot and the French SNECMA Services have reached an agreement to set up a joint venture at Vnukovo Aviation Repair Plant 400 to repair the CFM56 engine, which is installed in Airbus 320 and Boeing 737. The plant will not only serve French and Russian planes, it will enter the European market for airplane engine repairs. Experts say that other engine producers will follow the SNECMA lead and set up their own repair bases.
Aeroflot, SNECMA Services and Vnukovo Aviation Repair Plant 400 signed the “Memorandum on Mutual Understanding in Relation to Conducting Joint Work to Study the Possibilities of Founding in Russia a Joint Enterprise for the Technical Servicing, Maintenance and Overhauling of the CFM56 Aviation Engine Installed on Airplanes of the A320 and B737 Families” yesterday at the MAKS 2007 airshow. An agreement is to be signed next year, since the participants shares have yet to be determined.
VARZ-400 now provides maintenance and overhauling to Russian planes, with a full cycle of service for engines, modules and the airframe. Plant general director Alexey Chernyshev called the joint venture with Aeroflot “a very successful project.” He told Kommersant that “Fleets with A320 and B737 planes equipped with CFM56 engines are growing fast in Russia and Aeroflot has the largest fleet of them of all.” Chernyshev said that VARZ-400 will provide the premises, SNECMA will provide the equipment, supervision and trademark.
As a result, Aeroflot will have to transport its plane engines from Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, where its fleet is based, to Moscow's Vnukovo Airport for repairs. Now, however, the engines are sent abroad and, according to Yury Belykh, head of the Aeroflot technical complex, “Repairs and service of engines at an enterprise located in Russia will, in particular, permit us to lower expenses on their transport and customs clearance and short the time the work takes.” Irina Dannenberg, head of the Aeroflot press service, told Kommersant that the company now has about 30 planes with CFM56 engines, and there will be 56 by 2010. At SNECMA Services, they declined to comment on the project, since the memorandum specifies that only Aeroflot will communicate with the press.
Chernyshev noted that there are about 120 planes in Russia equipped with CFM56 engines. Besides Aeroflot, they are used by Aeroflot's subsidiaries Aeroflot Nord and Aeroflot Don, as well as by the City of Moscow's airline Atlant Soyuz, SkyExpress, S7 (Siberian Airlines) and the Russia state transport company. All of them will be potential clients of VARZ-400, as will foreign airlines that fly planes of that type into Russia. “Foreign companies, mainly from Eastern European countries, will be able to repair their engines at our plant if the price and quality of our work suits them better than the same processing in, for example, Israel,” Chernyshev said.
Experts suggest that the Aeroflot-SNECMA joint venture may inspire other aircraft engine manufacturers to begin similar projects in Russia. Boris Rybak, general director of the Infomost consulting company, also noted that the joint venture will “to a certain degree” encourage the purchase of planes equipped with the CFN56 engine by Russian air carriers.
Alexey Ekimovsky
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 23, 2007
|
|
|
