PARIS. June 14 (Interfax-AVN) - Ukraine has not brought any airplanes to perform demonstration flights at the Le Bourget international air show in France, Ukrainian delegation spokesman at the show Oleksandr Lyashko said on Monday.
Fears arose after two Ukrainian planes were seized as part of international property litigation, Lyashko told reporters. Another reason was that the "bureaucratic machine" had been too slow to deliver, he said.
Initially, Ukraine planned to bring Mriya, Ruslan, An-10, An-148, and An-70 planes to Le Bourget, but "we haven't brought any of them for fear that they would share the plight of the Ruslan that was seized," he said.
One Ruslan was seized in Canada in 2003, and another in Belgium 2004, after the Stockholm Arbitration Court satisfied a suit from Cypriot company TMR Energy Limited against the Ukrainian State Property Fund.
One of the planes was returned to Ukraine in January 2005 after the Supreme Court of Newfoundland ruled that the Stockholm court had no jurisdiction over the Canadian province.
The other aircraft is still in Belgium. In April 2005, a Belgian court put off until November a session that will consider the legality of the plane's seizure. The plane was seized while it was carrying out a flight for NATO.
Ukraine had been holding talks with Azerbaijan to borrow a Ukrainian-made An-140 for the show, but "the bureaucratic machine was too slow to perform," and the plane didn't arrive on time, he said.
Oleksandr Kyva, deputy chief designer of the Ukrainian aircraft design group Antonov, told reporters that the firm "was ready and wanted" to show an An-148 in Le Bourget, but Ukraine received no guarantees that the plane would not be seized.
"After the seizure of a plane in Brussels and after seizures of airplanes in other countries, we decided not to send any aircraft to Le Bourget," he said.