New generation Russian aircraft to be bought by Cuba

Il-96, a new Russian airplane, has found a new foreign buyer, Cubana Aviation, Izvestia reported. In compliance with a $100 million agreement signed between the Russian leasing company Ilyushin Finans Co. and Cuba's Aviaimport, the airline will receive two new Ils by next spring.

Since the 1959 Cuba revolution until the early 1990s, Cubana Aviation only bought Soviet-made planes. Even the country's president, Fidel Castro, flies in an Il-62 built about 30 years ago. Cubana Aviation could possibly continue to purchase Russian Ils, Izvestia noted.

According to Viktor Livanov, the general director of the Ilyushin airplane plant, "all talk about the Russian aircraft industry being unable to compete with foreign producers promotes interests of those who want to flood Russia with secondhand planes that should have been taken to a garbage dump."