OREANDA-NEWS. On August 23, 2007 the Antonov Aircraft Design and Manufacturing Complex (AADMC) (Kyiv) announced plans to design a military-transportation version of the AN-148, Chief Designer Dmytro Kiva of the AADMC told a press conference within the International Air Space Showroom MAX-2007 in the city of Zhukovsky (Russia), reported the Official website http://www.kmu.gov.ua.

According to him, there are several clients for the military-transportation AN-148.

The airplane's weight-lift will be of 20 tons with standard containers as the AN-12 and SI-130 have.

The market is expected to see the new model of AN-148 within two-three years.

Dmytro Kiva also noted that the AADMC means to continue modernizing of the civil AN-148. According to him, it is planed to make the model longer to house of up to 95 passengers, and to work out a possible flight under nil visibility, when a pilot runs a plane by display only.

As experts' estimations revealed, the AN-148 surpluses by 25-30% over other planes of the class in operating economy. Approximate capacity of the plane's world market by 2013 is valued at almost 500 planes, in the CIS market - 170 planes.

AN-148 reference price of conventional modification reaches USD 20 million. The plane's baseline version is designed for transportation of up to 80 passengers.