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Comment by D_Alex | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with you about the effect of sanctions. Their result was that airliners became a strategic priority rather than something Russia was happy to buy overseas forever.

Furthermore, the sanctions demonstrated that there is sovereign risk associated with purchasing Western airliners.

Finally, IIRC the airline's regrets were largely related to the poor early reliability of the French-built parts, specifically combustors, for the Superjet engines. It remains to be seen how the new Russian engines will perform.

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Demand for Russian built airlines in Russia /= them being competitive with Boeing and Airbus. The USSR built airliners as a strategic priority for the domestic market for decades: their track record of being terrible was one of the reasons behind scepticism of the Superjet

And airlines in most countries have far more to worry about buying aircraft whose maintenance depends on a faraway pariah state and that are not certified in Europe than they do about US sanctions targeting them. And even if they do, still not necessarily more difficult to circumvent the sanctions (as Mahan Air did with wet leased 747s) and access a worldwide parts supply and MRO market than rely on being able to maintain and sell on your Russian aircraft at reasonable price and timeliness...

It would also be surprising if the new Russian engines were competitive on performance with new Western engines, and likewise with other components they've had to switch to domestic manufacture for.

>faraway pariah state

By that you mean a state sanctioned by the US and the EU, which together comprise about 10% of the world's population.

And most of the companies that'll get parts shipped to you and do your maintenance, especially when you consider getting UAC MRO certifications isn't exactly an exciting opportunity for companies from China, the Middle East or Latin America either. And doing business with Russian aerospace companies was a PITA when you had access to easy international payments and didn't have a risk of becoming a sanctioned company yourself

The sanctions have almost entirely shut down Russian airliner production. They have only managed to deliver a handful of complete aircraft since 2022, and those largely used parts already on hand. Much of their supply chain is just gone and will take years to rebuild. When they eventually do get the complete production system up and running again their engines will still be less fuel efficient: airlines live and die by fuel efficiency.

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