Published: 11/21/1997

On 18 September, the largest An-124 operators held a technical council at the level of technical directors. Apart from the exchange of technology know-how, they discussed the matter of upgrading the Ruslan to the latest US requirements to noise and vertical separation minima over Atlantic. Today, 22 An-124s are in hands of civil users, including five in the Ukraine. Volga-Dnepr president Aleksei Isaikin says that his company has already fitted one Ruslan with additional sheeting on the D-18T engines and that by the end of the next year all Ruslans in Volga-Dnepr inventory will have been modified. Isaikin says that it is important to reach an understanding with other An-124 operators on modernisation programmes of the plane in order to reduce expenses per airframe. "The modified An-124 will remain a highly competitive airplane on the international market well into the next century", he says. Volga-Dnepr estimates that some $4m is needed to make its seven Ruslans comply with US noise requirements. The avionics suite needs upgrading as well, which increases the overall cost of the modernisation programme to $25-30m. Today, the share of the US market in Volga-Dnepr activities accounts for 30%, Isaikin remarks. The An-124 operators also negotiate on joint measures to improve the reliability of the D-18T engines. Isaikin says that to date Volga-Dnepr has not had an in-flight shut-down, but a relatively short TBO life of the early-version D-18Ts has forced the company to have as many as 46 engines in stock to keep seven airframes operable. Volga-Dnepr has proposed to other An-124 users to form a fund jointly for a programme of upgrading the old-series D-18Ts into "M" versions with a TBO of 4,000 flight hours. Isaikin says that this programme would help the company to increase yearly utilisation per An-124 from 1,200 hours in 1996 up to 2,000 hours in 1998. (AL1197.2) (VK)

Article ID: 85