MiG Announces Serial Production of Tu-334

The Russian Aircraft Production Association MiG plans to produce 100 of the Tu-334 short-range passenger airliners by the year of 2009. MiG Deputy Director General Vladimir Kravchuk reported the information on Tuesday. He spoke at a briefing dedicated to creation of a special company meant for production and sale of these airliners.

The serial production schedule will be growing: in the framework of the schedule four airliners will be produced at the workshop in Lukhovitsy in the Moscow Region in 2004. Then, the number of airliners to be produced in succeeding years will be 8, 12, 12 and 24 correspondingly.
Vladimir Kravchuk says that the number of airliners to be produced agrees with the number of requests from airlines. "We hope to increase production of the airliner every year."
 
Irrespective of the fact that the first 2 or 3 airliners will be produced at the prime cost of $25-30 million, they will be sold for not more than $13 million. The MiG deputy director general says that only this price will help win the market.  
 
According to Vladimir Kravchuk, to make the airliners successful on the market "gross production of Tu-334 must be started; at that the government should guarantee a 5-year abolishment of the value added tax and the tax for state-run property." Preferences of this kind are usually given to western aircraft producers by their governments. The MiG Deputy Director General Vladimir Kravchuk hopes that the problem will be settled by the end of the year.

The new Tu-334 will in the future replace the passenger airliners Tu-154B and Yak-42 that have almost exhausted their resources. The new airliner Tu-334 may house 100 passengers; it meets all the modern technical requirements laid down by the European Union.