Antonov suspends work on the new Mriya: what is known?
21 September 2024 04:56
The Ukrainian enterprise Antonov has completed urgent work and will continue to restore its largest aircraft, the Mriya, after the end of hostilities. This is reported by Ekonomichna Pravda, citing sources in the company, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports .]
The newspaper notes that the company’s employees have completed the defecting of the destroyed An-225 Mriya aircraft, which was carried out to preserve the surviving parts. The company is now focusing its efforts “on higher priority tasks for the state”.
It is noted that the work was financed from a special fund for the restoration of Mriya. The fund had three million dollars on its balance sheet, and most of these funds were received as royalties from Microsoft.
The American company offered gamers an add-on to the Microsoft Flight Simulator game with the An-225 aircraft, and Antonov received 100% of the sales revenue in the first year. However, there was one condition: the money had to be spent on the rebuilding of the aircraft.
The exact cost of the new Mriya has not yet been calculated. It will depend, among other things, on whether the company can use enemy Ruslan aircraft as donors of parts. Currently, they are in Canada and Germany, but they can be confiscated in favour of Ukraine.
As a reminder, one of the world’s largest and most powerful Ukrainian-made An-225 Mriya aircraft was destroyed in late February 2022 as a result of an attack by Russian troops on the Gostomel airport near Kyiv.
Later, the crew commander of the world’s largest transport aircraft, Dmytro Antonov, accused Antonov’s management of inaction, which allowed the Russians to destroy Mriya.
In April, the state-owned concern Ukroboronprom fired the CEO of the state-owned enterprise Antonov, Serhiy Bychkov.
Subsequently, the media reported that the SBU had detained Antonov officials who had obstructed the activities of the Ukrainian military in Hostomel. In particular, the current CEO of Antonov, Serhiy Bychkov, was notified of being suspected of negligence.
