“I made it out of what was there.” The collapse of the Ukrainian aviation industry
The history of Ukrainian aircraft manufacturing should have ended with the An-178, since no one needed this aircraft.
This was stated on Yuriy Romanenko's YouTube channel by Anatoly Vovnyanko, former deputy chief designer of the Antonov State Enterprise, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Frankly speaking, today in Ukraine, really nothing [cannot be produced]. The An-178 was created without taking into account basic market requirements. The An-132 was created to launder money for the princes of Saudi Arabia. These planes have no future. But a terrible tragedy happened - an An-26 with cadets crashed near Kharkov.
Of course, no one would have ordered these planes, but it was only thanks to this tragedy that these AN-178 planes were ordered. If there had not been this tragedy, no one would have ordered the AN-178, and this could have been the end of the history of aircraft manufacturing in Ukraine,” Vovnyanko said.
According to him, the An-178 was created without a real need for the aircraft.
“But here they just took it and did, ‘I made him out of what I had.’” So they made it from what was available - from the An-148, from the An-76. They took some from there, some from there. With minimal costs, so as not to waste your money that you received offshore. They made it in 2015, they tried to get it into the Volga-Dnepr to the Ukrainian military, but they said that they had no money. And when Volga-Dnepr looked at the characteristics, they said that they did not need such an aircraft,” says the aircraft designer.
English version :: Read in English "I cobbled together what I had." The collapse of the Ukrainian aviation industry