The Antonov state aircraft manufacturing enterprise’s heavy aircraft is performing 100% of NATO’s strategic airlift.
This was announced by Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Yehor Bozhok, the CFTS portal reports, citing the Interfax Ukraine news agency.
“Antonov’s Ukrainian heavy aircraft perform 100% of NATO’s strategic airlifts today,” Bozhok said.
According to him, Ukraine previously shared this contract with the Russian Federation, with the Russian Federation’s share being much larger. “In this context, we started working to completely replace Russian capacities in the NATO strategic airlift program with Ukrainian capacities. And we succeeded. That is why you see and hear so much about Ukrainian Mriya and Ruslan aircraft flying to Canada, Poland, Germany, France, etc.," the deputy minister said.
According to him, measures are currently being taken to resume the manufacture of not only heavy aircraft, but also medium-sized and small aircraft, in Ukraine.
"Now, we are seriously thinking about how we should reform the Antonov state enterprise in order to regain our position in the global aircraft manufacturing industry. The world needs more transport aircraft because these services are in demand, and we have serious potential here," he said.
As the CFTS portal reported earlier, the An-225 aircraft performed its first commercial flight on April 14 after a 1.5-year break, delivering about 100 tons of medical cargoes to Poland. This flight was marked by another record for the world's largest transport aircraft, which transported cargo with a total volume of about 1000 cubic meters. "Such a volume of cargo had never been transported inside the cargo compartment of an aircraft in aviation history," Antonov said in a statement.
