Antonov An-70 Conducts Flight Test After Modernisation

The Antonov An-70 tactical transport aircraft performed a successful flight test on Thursday. The aircraft underwent modernisation work in the past two years due to a number of technical malfunctions in previous flights. Dmytro Kiva, President and Chief Designer of Antonov State Enterprise, said, “The program of flight tests of the modernized aircraft envisaged 20 flights, which would be performed soon. Then the final second stage of the joint program of state tests of the An-70 with the participation of the Defense Ministries of Ukraine and Russia will start”. The An-70 is jointly built by Ukrainian and Russia and has had a long-running and troubled gestation period, with one prototype crashing in a collision in the 1990s, and a second crashing in 2001 in an accident during take-off in Omsk. Prior to this An-70 had trouble related to its propfan engines. But in 2006, Russia with drew the project and said it preferred modernizing the Il-76, but later joined the project. The Russian military is planning to purchase at least 60 An-70s by 2020.