According to Sergei Ivanov, who is also defense minister, Russia's civilian aircraft fleet has become obsolete. However, the country's aircraft manufacturing industry does not meet the increasing demand of domestic air carriers for modern airliners, forcing the latter to buy or lease foreign-made aircraft that have been in service for more than 10 years.
"Import duties on foreign planes older than 10 years must, in my opinion, be prohibitive, rather than permissive or even encouraging as they are at present," Sergei Ivanov, who oversees the Russian aircraft manufacturing industry, said at a meeting of a military-industrial commission under the Russian government.
The minister said Russia currently manufactures about a dozen long haul and regional aircraft
per year, and that the situation must be reversed in the near future to avoid a looming crisis in the domestic aircraft industry.
He said the average service life for long haul jets operated by Russian air carriers has reached 18 years, and 30 years for regional jets, making it imperative to reconstitute the domestic fleet of civilian aircraft with 100 new planes every year.
"I can see only one solution - we must change the current situation so that our aircraft fleet is primarily renewed by domestically manufactured planes," Ivanov said, adding that Russia must start building modern aircraft that meet international standards of efficiency, safety, noise reduction and comfort.
Ivanov said Russia is set to build 700 state-of-the-art passenger airliners, in particular the SuperJet 100, by 2015.
He also said the share of Russian civilian passenger aircraft on the world market would grow to 5-7% by 2012, and to 10-12% by 2015.
Russia has experienced several fatal accidents in recent years, most notably involving the Tu-154, an aging Soviet-era airliner. On Monday, a Tu-154 taking off from Moscow's Domodedovo airport was forced to return when one of its three engines caught fire.
No injuries were reported in the incident.
