A planned Russian-Ukrainian venture to manage the planned harmonization of the aviation industries of the two countries will be launched on October 1, 2010, the president of the Russian United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) Alexei Fyodorov said on Monday.
Both sides are being quick in organizing the venture, and "there have been no delays in evidence either on the Ukrainian or on the Russian side," Fyodorov told a news conference in Farnborough, venue of a current international air show.
Preparations for ultimately merging the Russian and Ukrainian aviation industries would take between a year and a year and a half, Fyodorov said, citing, a UAC estimate. He said the legal status of Ukrainian enterprises is a brake on the merger process.
Ukrainian aircraft manufacturer Antonov will become part of Russian aircraft maker Irkut (RTS: IRKT) in the course of the unification, and Antonov aircraft will have An replaced with OAK as their designation. OAK is the Russian acronym for UAC. "At the moment, they are definitely foreign aircraft," Fyodorov said.
"We are ready both at industrial and at political level to carry through this action of integrating the Ukrainian aviation industry as represented by Antonov and aircraft enterprises with enterprises of UAC," he said.
