The project has already gone too far for the state to allow it to die ingloriously under the pressure of loans.
When passengers first see a novelty of the domestic aviation industry - "Superjet", they are often surprised. Why does an airplane with a big name look so small? In the same "Sheremetyevo", where "Superjets" can be found more often than at any other airport in the world, they are lost against the background of not only long-haul airliners, but also completely ordinary Airbus A320 and Boeing 737.
But the hype that accompanied the creation of the first post-Soviet airliner in Russia, in our information era, pre-tuned future passengers to at least a competitor to Airbus or Boeing, an aircraft that would reintroduce the country into an elite, very small club of modern passenger airliners manufacturers.
Therefore, the novelty is usually compared at home not with aircraft of the same class, not so frequent guests at our airports Embraer E-190 and Bombardier CRJ1000, but with the usual short-haul products of the giants of the American and European aviation industry. Fortunately, after the withering away of domestic technology, it was she who filled our airports. This comparison initially puts the Russian aircraft in unequal conditions. First of all, RRJ, Russian Regional Jet, as it was called in the first years of its existence, was not intended to be the savior of the entire Russian aviation industry or a competitor to Airbus. It was just an initiative project of the Sukhoi company, its second attempt to diversify its business into the civilian segment in anticipation of a drop in sales of its main products - Su-27 fighters.
When at the very beginning of the 2000th RRJ was just thinking, the goal set - to create a demanded passenger aircraft from scratch - was bold and extremely ambitious for Sukhoi. Then he was a manufacturer of only combat aircraft and was on an independent voyage. 10 years later, within the framework of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), which includes almost all the remnants of the country's aviation industry, the project still looks ambitious, but not so large-scale. It is simply not capable of being the "engine" driving the united domestic aviation industry forward.
The niche chosen for the RRJ is initially modest and not too prestigious - a regional jet for secondary lines that do not provide loading of standard narrow-body short-haul liners. Such regional aircraft are inferior to Airbus and Boeing products, not only in size, but usually also in convenience for passengers and crew. The global demand for them is small and now barely exceeds the mark of one hundred aircraft per year. In the first half of this year, airlines around the world received only 50 aircraft of this class - from the Canadian Bombardier CRJ700 to the Brazilian Embraer E195. A dozen more were provided by the aviation industries of Russia and Ukraine. For comparison: about 600 units of larger aircraft Airbus and Boeing were delivered in the same six months. The number of the American "bestseller" Boeing 737-800 has increased by 182 units.
In terms of value, the segment of large regional companies is also not impressive - over the past year, all of their deliveries gained four to five billion dollars, which are completely lost against the background of tens of billions of dollars earned by two aviation giants of the passenger aircraft industry. It is not surprising that they look at this segment and the manufacturers of the so-called second tier working on it, so condescendingly that they are ready to help them with advice or two.
Even with the most ambitious plans to produce 70 Superjets per year at the current catalog price of $ 35 million, the annual revenue of Sukhoi Civil Aircraft CJSC (SCA) from their sale will be no more than $ 2.5 billion. In practice, aircraft are almost never sold at catalog prices. Discounts of 20-30 percent from it are the norm, so even a fully loaded enterprise is unlikely to be able to earn at least two billion dollars a year.
Despite the apparent significance of this amount, it is no longer something incredible for the domestic aviation industry. The total revenue of the UAC in 2012, when only 12 SSJs were produced, amounted to 171 billion rubles, which is more than five billion dollars. Of course, it was not received from the sale of SCAC products, but mainly from the production of military aircraft both for export and under the significantly increased state defense order. Only slightly less than 126 billion rubles were earned by Russian Helicopters in 2012. The United Engine Corporation, in which the production of aircraft engines is also concentrated, earned 129 billion.
In the coming years, the revenues of these large corporations will continue to grow due to the increase in the supply of domestic aircraft. Meanwhile, Sukhoi Civil Aircraft will not reach the planned production rate of five SSJs per month before 2015. By that time, on a corporate scale, this program will seem even less significant financially.
Even if the SCAC manages to establish a truly serial production, the number of aircraft produced in itself is not an indicator of the success of the project and a guarantee of profitability.
A good example is the Japanese regional officer of the 60s of the last century YS-11, created with the active support of the government and having no less ambitious goals than the current Superjet. The plane was an attempt by Japan to create its own civil aviation industry from scratch. From the very beginning, it was seen not only and not so much as a "workhorse" for national airlines, but as an export product capable of attracting currency to the economy destroyed by war and occupation.
The aircraft used a very large number of imported components, including the engine, which allowed it to be quickly certified by the US aviation authorities. Over the decade, the YS-11 was produced in 182 copies and exported to many countries, including the United States and Western Europe. Some of its copies fly today.
With all this, the YS-11 program is considered a major failure of the Japanese aviation industry, since it became deeply unprofitable for the companies participating in it, which were unable to cover their development and production costs, which turned out to be significantly higher than planned. The failure put an end to dreams of an independent civil aviation industry in Japan and for decades discouraged the country's leadership from playing in this field. Only now the next attempt of the Japanese aircraft industry - the regional MRJ - is preparing to take off.
I would like to believe that the fate of the Russian Superjet will turn out to be more successful, but this cannot be guaranteed yet. Its life cycle as a competitive product is limited. Now the plane, in terms of its technical and economic indicators, is not worse than any of its current competitors. But by the end of this decade, a modernized Brazilian Embraer should appear. Even today, its far from new CF34 engines are in no way inferior to the economic indicators of the Russian-French SaM146, and the remotorization to promising P&W geared engines will immediately make the current generation of SSJ uncompetitive.
Several previously re-engineered E-Jets will begin arriving at the airlines Japanese MRJs and Canadian CSeries. Although they are not direct competitors to the Russian aircraft, they are close to it in terms of capacity and will inevitably take away some of their potential customers.
Most likely, the long-suffering Chinese ARJ21 will also reach the series. The regional leader, who, on the instructions of the Chinese Communist Party, was supposed to start transporting passengers five years ago, still cannot complete the certification tests. Despite the fact that the ARJ21 made its first flight only six months later than SSJ, it will not be able to obtain certificates from the Chinese aviation authorities, and then the US FAA, no earlier than the end of 2014. This shows how difficult it is to create a modern passenger aircraft that meets stringent international requirements.
Delays in plans, first with the timing of certification, and then serious problems with the deployment of mass production, reduced the life cycle of the SSJ. Each year the deferral cost several dozen Superjets, which will never be built again.
According to the forecast of the Forecast International research center, 60 An-148/158, 376 Bombardier CRJ, 352 Bombardier CSeries, 103 ARJ21, 973 Embraer E-Jet, including modernized, 285 MRJ and only 206 Russian SSJ.
The overseas estimate for production of just over two hundred SSJs seems overly pessimistic. There are already about a hundred firm orders for the Russian aircraft. Their successful implementation will undoubtedly attract new customers. Serial production is gaining momentum. Since the summer of this year, GSS has achieved a rate of release of two SSJs per month. Production becomes rhythmic. The entire complex chain of cooperation necessary for modern aircraft construction has been debugged. Not a single passenger aircraft in the post-Soviet history of Russia has come close to the achieved production rates.
But two cars a month is only 24 a year, which does not correspond either to the plans of the SCAC themselves, or to the delivery schedules agreed with the buyers. In the fall, the rate of production increased still, but it is still clear that Sukhoi Civil Aircraft will not be able to reach the planned production of five aircraft per month or 60 per year before 2015. And by the end of the decade, its sales will fall due to the emergence of new, more economical and young competitors. This makes it obvious that the officially announced plans for the implementation of the 800 SSJ are unrealizable. It does not look too realistic even to reach the mark of half a thousand produced by the SSJ of the currently available modifications. This calls into question the payback of the entire project.
The delay in reaching production targets has already led the SCAC to the brink of a financial abyss. The development and production start-up program was funded in large part from extrabudgetary sources, mainly medium-term commercial loans and bonds. The terms of payment on them were inexorably approaching, and the proceeds from the supply of one or two aircraft per month simply did not allow them to pay off debts on time. This required borrowing over and over again, not for the development of the company, but to keep it afloat pending the deployment of a full-fledged production.
By mid-2013, the debt burden of the SCAC exceeded 70 billion rubles. Only interest on them this year will be paid about four billion rubles - the cost of four or five brand new "Superjets".
At the same time, the production of SSJ is still unprofitable. The cost of manufacturing one machine is currently slightly less than one billion rubles. At the same time, the selling price for starting customers is 200-300 million rubles lower than the cost price. Of course, these are planned losses, temporary dumping in order to win back a piece of the competitive regional aircraft market for themselves. With an increase in the rate of production, the cost price is gradually decreasing, and the catalog price for subsequent customers is noticeably higher than for the starting ones. As a result, reaching an operating break-even point in 2014–2015 looks achievable. But while the financial condition of the manufacturer only worsens, debts and losses accumulate, and huge interest payments hang around the neck like a millstone.
But the Superjet project has already gone too far for the state to allow it to perish ingloriously under the pressure of short-term and medium-term loans, which have so far nothing to repay. State officials acted unusually wise for them, choosing the best way to save the "hopes of the domestic aircraft industry." Help came in the form of an unusually long-term loan from the state-owned Vnesheconombank, which provided the SCA with a billion dollars at 8.5 percent per annum for 12 years. This loan is not intended for the development of production, but simply allows refinancing the loans hanging over the project, postponing the issue of repayment of loans until 2024, when the programs of the basic and long-range Superjet will already come to their logical conclusion due to obsolescence.
This removed the threat of immediate bankruptcy from the SCAC, but it is unlikely by that time, even with high demand for its aircraft, the company will be able to successfully pay off the accumulated debts. They will have to be given to the next projects of the company. Therefore, after reaching the operating breakeven, when at least the proceeds from the sold machines will exceed the costs of their production, the SCAC will have to seriously engage in the development of a successor to the SSJ. In fact, it's time to think about such an aircraft now. But such a development requires an investment of additional hundreds of millions of dollars. The company, already struggling for existence, simply cannot afford it now. Nevertheless, she will definitely have to return to the theme of both the elongated SSJ and the more advanced SSJ-NG.
To date, the program has required SCAC to raise more than three billion dollars for development, testing, production and after-sales service systems. Moreover, R&D directly cost less than a billion dollars, and the largest costs fell precisely on the launch of mass production, which still requires additional investments.
The creation of a small regional "Superjet" required enormous costs unseen before in the post-Soviet aviation industry in Russia. It is unlikely that this project alone will be able to recoup them in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, during its implementation, invaluable experience was gained in the design, certification, deployment of production and the creation of an after-sales service system for a modern world-class passenger aircraft.
The MC-21, who replaced it as the flagship of the domestic aircraft industry, is more daring. The promising short-haul narrow-body airliner developed by the UAC now claims to play in a completely different league. He must throw the glove no longer to second-tier aircraft manufacturers, but to the undisputed leaders of the world aircraft industry, to fight for a market with a volume of more than a thousand aircraft a year.
If it were not for the regional leader "Sukhoi", who proved that Russia is capable of creating a modern passenger aircraft from scratch, these plans could only be laughed at. Now the MS-21, whatever the name it received in the end, is taken seriously. It will be easier for him to follow the already beaten path, and it will have more chances of success.
But it will also require large investments. Even according to a conservative official estimate of the United Aircraft Corporation, the cost of developing a domestic competitor to the short-haul aircraft Boeing and Airbus is at least $ 7 billion. As the experience of the SSJ project shows, this amount will only grow in the process of deploying serial production and commissioning. The inevitable development delays, which no modern aircraft project has been able to do without, will also inflate costs relative to plan. As a result, MS-21 is unlikely to be able to keep within less than $ 10 billion. Therefore, the potential damage will be much higher in case of failure or failure of the project. It will no longer be measured in hundreds of millions, but in billions of dollars.
In order to minimize the risk of failure in the creation of the MS-21, the lessons of the development, certification and operation of the SSJ should be taken into account as much as possible. They were obtained the hard way - by bumping into their mistakes. The path is painful, but easy to understand and memorable.
Unfortunately, for several years SSJ and MS-21 developed, albeit in parallel, but almost independently of each other. As a result, the differences between them are now greater than similarities. This greatly complicates the adaptation of the Sukhoi Civil Aircraft developments to the new project. Nevertheless, MS-21 is still at the stage where it is possible. And the more unification can be achieved between these projects, the better their future prospects will be.
The Superjet has come a long way from a paper airplane that existed only in sketches to a world-class export product. The costs of this turned out to be great. It is unlikely that the project as a whole will become a commercial success. But the positive and negative experience gained can and should save much more in subsequent programs of the Russian aviation industry. Then, if they succeed, both the MS-21 and the future projects of the UAC will owe much to the modest little Superjet.
