FARNBOROUGH, UK. July 13 (Interfax) - The Yakovlev Yak-130 trainer and combat aircraft excels all foreign-made aircraft of its class in the cost and effectiveness characteristics, said Konstantin Popovich, vice president of the Irkut corporation and director of the Yakovlev Engineering Center.
"We rate Yak-130 as the best aircraft in the cost and effectiveness category," he said at the Yak-130 presentation at the Farnborough international air show.
The Irkut corporation has launched serial production of Yak-130s and has long-term plans with the Defense Ministry, he said.
"This is very important for us as the groundwork for its reliability and quality maintenance and logistics support," Popovich said.
Yak-130 is a new-generation aircraft given its flight and technical characteristics, avionics, on-board systems and power plant, all of which attests to it being a quality product. Also, Yak-130 complies with high flight safety standards, and has low flight-hour and life cycle costs, he said.
Asked to compare the Italian AM-346 and Yak-130, Popovich said that Yak-130 has higher flight characteristics.