Slawko From Canada, joined exactly 14 years ago today! , 3799 posts, RR: 10 Posted (12 years 8 months 2 weeks 3 days 20 hours ago) and read 1090 times:
Ukraine, Air Foyle consider Canada tender
Reuters
KYIV, Sept 6 - Ukraine's Antonov aircraft designing company and its sales agent Air Foyle of Britain are considering participation in a tender to supply heavy air cargo planes to the Canadian air forces, an official said on Wednesday.
Kostyantyn Lushakov, head of Antonov's subsidiary Antonov Airlines, told Reuters the tender would be announced in 2001. The terms of the tender would include financial leasing of planes for a period from five to eight years. "Antonov and Air Foyle are preparing to participate in the Canadian tender and we hope that our An-124 aircraft has good chances to win," Lushakov said.
"Our plane has unique technical qualities, but we worry that political motives will finally determine the choice," he said.
Earlier this year, the Ukrainian-Russian military air cargo plane Antonov An-70 failed to win an international tender to replace obsolete U.S.-made planes in European forces.
Many experts said that despite Antonov's technical advantages the NATO states preferred a European plane maker to avoid dependence on ex-Soviet aircraft industries.
Lushakov also said Canada needed a maximum of three strategic heavy cargo planes to transport its peacekeepers around the world, and the Ukrainian-made An-124 would be the best choice.
Antonov's Ruslan An-124 is already the world's biggest cargo aircraft with a 120-ton capacity.
Earlier this year designers said they planned to modernize the Antonov-124 in a bid to increase its capacity to 150 tons, and service life to 40,000 hours from a current 24,000.
Antonov Airlines operates eight An-124s, and Lushakov said the company was ready to lease all its cargo planes if the country benefited from the deal.
Antonov told Reuters on Tuesday the bureau was in talks with Air Foyle on joint work aimed to rehabilitate and modernize the world's largest cargo plane, the An-225 Mria (Dream), developed as a booster for the Soviet Union's space shuttle program but unused for more than a decade. It also said the Antonov-225 might make its first test flight by the year-end.
"Clive Beddoe says he favours competition, but his actions do not support that idea." Robert Milton - CEO Air Canada
Copper1 From Canada, joined Jun 2000, 438 posts, RR: 1 Reply 1, posted (12 years 8 months 2 weeks 3 days 18 hours ago) and read 1011 times:
Heavy transport for the CAF makes sense. They might as well get out of the fighter business, our token number of CF-18's make little strategic or financial sense.
CPDC10-30 From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2000, 4759 posts, RR: 26 Reply 2, posted (12 years 8 months 2 weeks 3 days 18 hours ago) and read 1002 times:
Why is there a sudden need for such a large aircraft? I can understand that this would be an advantage in deploying peacekeeping forces by reducing the time required. But they could probably just lease a few 747 classic freighters for much less and have fewer worries with maintenance and replacement parts. Plus they have five A310 also (CC-150 Polaris).
It would be cool to have the world's largest airplane (currently flying that is) in the CAF...
Qantas737 From Australia, joined Jul 2000, 738 posts, RR: 4 Reply 5, posted (12 years 8 months 2 weeks 3 days 8 hours ago) and read 961 times:
Antonov have awesome looking aircraft and they aren't really that dangerous like Ilyushin and Tupolev aircraft. It would be fun to see the Canadian Air Force buy/lease such a large aircraft
AC183 From Canada, joined Jul 1999, 1532 posts, RR: 2 Reply 6, posted (12 years 8 months 2 weeks 2 days 21 hours ago) and read 937 times:
Actually, I think we need even our token fighter force, although I wouldn't mind seeing the military buy SU-27's or -31's or whatever the current model is, although perhaps stick in western PW100 engines and make sure that the CAF would get parts fabrication authority to service the aircraft, but I think that for the needs of the CAF, SU's would be fine as fighters...
As to heavy transporters, guys, the 747F's or any other converted civilian aircraft simply won't work. You can't haul the heavy equipment like armoured personnel carriers with them, for one thing, and you can't get into remote strips, whether in the area of action, or even if you're talking about something like resupply to remote stations like CFS Alert.
AN-124's could potentially make sense, if the price was good. Boeing is really pushing the C-17's, however, which kind of worries me - expensive thing to do. And in my view, whatever happens we need some new Hercs, they aren't particularly good for heavy transport on long flights, but for many applications I think we need to replace the archaic Hercs the air force currently has.
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