MOSCOW. Feb 11 (Interfax-AVN) - Crews of the military transport aviation get fuel for 50 percent of their time in the air thanks to profits from commercial activity, Lieutenant General Viktor Denisov, commander of the military transport aviation, said on Monday.
The military transport aviation has been implementing commercial transportation orders since 1993, Denisov told Interfax-Military News Agency. "A part of crews is included in the 224th flight detachment that is certified as meeting ICAO international requirements and registered with the State Civil Aviation Service. It has the operator license and other certificates and licenses needed for activity of this kind," he said.
"A phase-out of the 224th flight detachment's activity would deliver a heavy blow to the military transport aviation," the commander stressed.
The competence of the detachment's crews goes beyond commercial flights, they are "primarily trained for international missions, including humanitarian and peacekeeping ones that are being implemented under the auspices of the government and the Defense Ministry," Denisov went on. "These missions are not of systematic nature," he stressed. However, "systematic training of crews on commercial fuel provide for a considerable decrease in the Defense Ministry's expenses on maintenance and training of military transport aviation crews," the commander noted.
In 2001, the average number of flying hours per person made 15 in the fighter aviation, 20 in the attack plane aviation, 14 in the bomber aviation, 22.5 in the long-range aviation and over 50 in the military transport aviation.
The 224th detachments includes planes of only two types - IL- 76 Candid and AN-124 Condor (Russian codename Ruslan).
"We follow the statutory order in signing contracts on transportation of economic cargo. In particular, the demand is high for cargo delivery to the regions of the Far North, such as the localities of Norilsk, Yakutsk, Tiksi, Magadan and Anadyr," the commander said.
Cooperation with several nations outside the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is handled by the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry's main department of international military cooperation. New and used military hardware, as well as spare parts for earlier exported hardware made in Russia, are delivered to those countries.
The AN-124 planes are engaged in accomplishment of missions only when airfields and the nature of cargo go in line with unique specifications of the heavy transport. "We hardly ever deliver economic cargo by AN-124 planes, because there are powerful commercial companies such as Volga-Dnieper, Polyot and Antonov Airlines that control the large-size cargo transportation sector on the market," the commander added.