Moscow-based airline Red Wings, a major operator of Tupolev’s Tu-204 jets, grumbled Tuesday about the low quality of the planes and the losses that it incurred because of several emergency landings this year.
“We have serious claims about the engines, which were demonstrated by the recent incidents with Red Wings planes,” CEO Konstantin Teterin said at a government meeting on air transportation safety. The company incurred losses of 370 million rubles ($12.9 million) during the spring and summer season because of a number of engine failures.
He said the airline, owned by billionaire Alexander Lebedev, wants compensation from the planes’ manufacturer. Red Wings also had delays of up to 11 months to get spare parts from Tupolev, including windscreens that should be replaced every three months, Teterin said.
“If Tupolev is the kind of organization that designs and produces planes just for the sake of [making] planes, they are doing their job,” he said. “If the planes are produced for air companies, Tupolev should listen to them.”
The engines are produced by the Perm Engine Plant, while Tupolev is 90.8 percent owned by the state’s United Aircraft Corporation.
Tupolev could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Tu-204 planes operated by Red Wings made emergency landings three times last summer, Gennady Kurzenkov, head of the Federal Air Transportation Agency, wrote in a letter to Tupolev management in September. He threatened to ground the 212-passenger, mid-range jets unless the problems are solved.
The model was developed to replace the Tu-154 and has been produced since 1995.
At the time, United Aircraft Corporation president Alexei Fyodorov acknowledged that there were problems with the model, and particularly the engines. He said his company was cooperating with Red Wings and Vladivostok-Avia — the main operators of the Tu-204 — to improve the service.
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