In Russia, The Failure Of The Project "new Cornplane" Was Stated

The project will be shut down.

Work on the development of Russia's new Baikal airplane, which was to replace the Soviet An-2 Kukuruznik, has reached a dead end and its mass production is no longer planned, Putin's envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yuri Trutnev said, according to The Moscow Times.

"You know that we were working on the development of a small Baikal airplane. As of today, it has reached a dead end. That is, we are not expecting a Baikal airplane," Trutnev said at an extended meeting of the State Duma Committee on the Far East and the Arctic. According to him, Russia, "unfortunately, has practically no small aviation." "Now we will have to get out of the situation by remotorizing An-2 aircraft," Trutnev noted.

The Baikal was developed by Baikal Engineering, a subsidiary of the Ural Civil Aviation Plant, starting in 2019. Initially, the Ministry of Industry and Trade allocated 3.5 billion rubles for the creation of "Baikal". Officials expected that serial production would be launched in 2024, and one airplane would cost 120 million rubles. In the course of designing the Baikal rose in price to 455 million rubles, but when Russian President Vladimir Putin drew attention to it, the price dropped to 280 million rubles. At the same time, the release was pushed back to 2025. However, as a source close to the Ministry of Industry and Trade later told Kommersant, the designers of the Baikal made a number of "dramatic mistakes" that made the vehicle "actually have to be reassembled." At the same time, the developer asked for about another 10 billion rubles and five years to finalize the aircraft.

Therefore, Trutnev promised that the aircraft "in one version or another" will be put into mass production in 2026. According to the Comprehensive Program for the Development of the Aviation Industry, which was approved by the government, a total of 139 such aircraft were to be produced by 2030.

LMS-901 "Baikal" was going to be used on local airlines. It was assumed that the aircraft would be designed to carry up to nine passengers or up to 2 tons of cargo. Cruising speed of the aircraft was to be up to 300 km per hour, and the maximum range of flight - 3 thousand kilometers. Kommersant's interlocutors in the Ministry of Industry and Trade noted that the alternative to the new Baikal could be a remotorized An-2. In this case, the United Engine Corporation, which is part of Rostec, may resume production of the Soviet TVD-10B engine. But this will require about 1.8 bln rubles, the publication's sources said.

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