The Head Of Russia's Aeroflot Predicted The Loss Of The SSJ-100

The problem lies with the foreign engines.

Russian airlines will not be able to replace the foreign engines on SSJ-100 aircraft with domestic ones on their own and will face the loss of aircraft, said Aeroflot CEO Sergey Aleksandrovsky. According to him, installing domestically produced engines is possible “only with certain measures of government support.” “If there are no subsidies for re-engining, there will be a gradual phase-out of the fleet for all companies operating the SSJ-100,” — Alexandrovsky told “Kommersant”.

He did not specify the amount of budgetary funding required to install domestic engines, but noted that retiring aircraft would have to be replaced “by redistributing flight hours across the rest of the fleet,” as well as with new MS-21s. The issue of funding sources and the economic feasibility of re-engining the SSJ-100 has been raised in the aviation industry since 2022, when the French company Safran, which was responsible for servicing and manufacturing parts for the hot section of the SaM-146, ceased its participation in the joint venture with the United Engine Corporation (UEC). Sources at *Kommersant* said that the cost of replacing the SaM-146 engines with Russian PD-8 engines was estimated at 2.1–2.3 billion rubles per aircraft.

However, some of the publication’s sources described this figure as an underestimate, since the production cost of a single PD-8 exceeded 1 billion rubles in 2024 and has been rising ever since. At the same time, some sources emphasized that the engine would become cheaper once mass production began. However, the question remains whether ODK will be able to produce a sufficient number of PD-8 engines. In 2023, the manufacturer of the SSJ-100 noted that the engine retrofit would require government support, since the process involves not only replacing the engines but also replacing the engine nacelles, modifying the pylons and wing box, the in-flight wiring harness, and auxiliary power unit systems.

ODK had previously predicted that nearly the entire SSJ-100 fleet would be phased out by 2030 due to the engines reaching the end of their service life.

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