OREANDA-NEWS. August 24, 2012. ANTONOV Company has participated in the Aerospace technologies, modern materials and equipment. Kazan - 2012 international exhibition (AKTO-2012) which took place from the 14th to 17th of August.

 On the day of  the exhibition opening, on August 14, Roustam Minnikhanov, President of Tatarstan Republic, and managers of aviation industry and aviation enterprises visited ANTONOV’s exposition. Dmytro Kiva, President – General Designer of ANTONOV Company, made a presentation of modern ANTONOV programmes. Especially he noted development of the programme of the AN-70 military STOL transport. It is planned to launch serial production of this aircraft at Kazan Aviation Production Association named after S.P.Gourbunov JSC. As Vasyl Kayumov, Director General of Kazan plant, said: “We believe in the AN-70 programme. This ambitious project has to give new stimulus, new impulse for development of our enterprise, in particular, its staff improvement”.

Till present, ANTONOV Company has completed work on modernization of the electronic equipment and systems of the AN-70 military STOL transport. As a result, the aircraft provides the most complete competitive package of airframe, powerplant and avionics systems available in the market today. Ahead – flight tests of the aircraft with new equipment. After that, the last stage of the Joint State Tests will be conducted with the participation of experts of MoD of Russian and Ukraine. Flight and technical crews involved in this programme were trained in the ANTONOV Company training centre.  The first serial AN-70s, which are being constructed at the ANTONOV Serial Production Plant by order of the MoD of Ukraine, will have new electronic equipment. Purchase of 60 such airplanes was included into the State Programme of armament of Russia till 2020. According to Minister of Defense of Russia Anatolii Serdyukov, at this stage of the programme Ministry of Defense of Russia makes all the necessary to complete the trials and launch the aircraft production. “We need the AN-70 very much”, -- emphasized he.  

 Dmytro Kyva’s report about the innovative technologies, used in developing the ANTONOV airplanes, their production and support in operation attracted  interest of participants of scientific and practical conference “Modern technologies, materials, equipment and accelerated restoration of qualified staff potential are the key links in revival of domestic aviation and rocket building”, which was held at the exhibition. In his speech General Designer emphasized on development of system of after-sale support of ANTONOV airplanes. “Improvemint of this system is primary task for our company”, -- said he. At present, the Customer Support Information Centre works 24 hours a day at ANTONOV Company. It functions as “a single window” to reply to queries within the minimum time. In addition, ANTONOV is establishing a full-function service center to provide all-round support to operators of new ANs.

Meetings with representatives of the aircraft operators were conducted during the exhibition. They expressed interest in airplanes of the AN-148 and AN-158 family. Thus, participation in AKTO-2012 became a new importatnt stap to development of cooperation between ANTONOV Company, enterprises of aircraft industry and aircraft operators of Tatarstan Republic.