The French weekly "Er e Cosmos" published an article by Pyotr Butovsky devoted to the analysis of the efficiency of the Be-200 aircraft under the heading "Questions on the Be-200 aircraft." The appearance of the article is associated with an analysis of the effectiveness of the Be-200, which was used this summer to extinguish large-scale fires in the central zone of Russia and the intention of the Ministry of Emergency Situations to additionally purchase 8 such machines.
As noted at the beginning of the article, all expert assessments of the possible market size for the Be-200, announced at the beginning of the launch of the new amphibious aircraft program, turned out to be untenable. According to pessimistic estimates, the market size for the Be-200 was estimated by experts at 400 vehicles, and according to optimistic forecasts, at 800 vehicles. However, both of these figures turned out to be far from reality. According to the president of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Alexei Fedorov, the Be-200 aircraft did not become popular in the aviation market. "We estimate the volume of the world market for the Be-200 in the amount of 50-70 machines in the next 15 years," A. Fedorov believes at present.
Abroad, the Be-200 has been rented several times since 2004 by Italy and Portugal. It has been presented several times in France, Greece and Germany. But although the Russian developers hoped that after repeated foreign presentations of the Be-200 they would be able to sell this aircraft on the world market, their plans were not destined to come true.
Based on the operational capabilities of the Be-200, the main problem for this aircraft is the insufficient number of suitable reservoirs that the crew can use to take water into the onboard tanks. In Portugal, for example, the Be-200 could use only 13 reservoirs, while the Canadair amphibious aircraft could take water from 63 reservoirs.
At the same time, if there was a lake in the Be-200's zone of operation at a distance of 10 km from the fire, a Russian plane could throw 69 tons of water into the burning zone within one hour. During the same time, the CL-215 plane could drop only 23 tons of water, and the CL-415 plane - 27 tons of water.
The journal provides indicative statistics of the separate use of the Be-200 and CL-415 in extinguishing forest fires in the Samara region. In particular, on August 5 and 6, one Be-200 dropped 483 tons of water during 60 visits to fire sources, i.e. dumped 242 tons of water daily. At the same time, only 8 tons of water could be taken in one pass over the water surface instead of 12 tons declared by the aircraft developer.
Over the next three days, two Italian CL-415 aircraft dropped a total of 1,713 tonnes of water into fire-engulfed forest areas, completing 290 flights in the process. In recalculation for one aircraft, it turns out that the daily rate of water discharge was 285 tons with an average water intake per pass of the water surface at the level of 5, 9 tons.
Thus, the magazine sums up the results of the comparative analysis, the CL-415, which is more than 2 times inferior to the Be-200 in terms of its weight and dimensions, turned out to be, on the whole, more efficient than the Russian aircraft.
