42 | Flight International | 18-31 August 2015 flightglobal.com
RUSSIA
SPECIAL REPORT
his new leadership means an in-house re-
structuring is likely to come soon, he offers a
quick reply.
“It’s unlucky to seek big changes right
now,” Slyusar says.
It is as if the Russian aerospace industry
was in a different universe five years ago. The
Superjet was completing certification testing,
the MC-21 had just been launched and West-
ern companies were largely free to share tech-
nologies with Russian commercial aviation
programmes. That was also the year that UAC
unveiled two strategic goals: to capture 3% of
the commercial aircraft market and nearly
10% of the military aircraft market by 2025.
The industrial and geopolitical landscape
is now almost unrecognisable from those
times, but UAC’s new chief executive soundsSTEPHEN TRIMBLE MOSCOW
Recently appointed to head up Russia’s United Aircraft,
Yuri Slyusar is tackling the challenge of a new economic
environment – and must rescue the Superjet programme
UNITY IS
STRENGTH
O
n an early spring afternoon slightly
less than three months after taking
over Russian aerospace behemoth
United Aircraft (UAC), Yuri Slyusar
enters a conference room of a Soviet-style,
beige concrete structure in central Moscow.
Slyusar, the former deputy minister of in-
dustry and trade for aviation, is already an
hour late for a one-hour interview. As he sits
down, he speaks in clipped Russian to his
translator, who politely relays a request:
“Mr. Slyusar asks if the interview can be
shortened to 30 minutes,” the translator says.
Your correspondent was hardly in a posi-
tion to object. Slyusar is the new manager of a
sprawling, state-owned corporation facing a
host of economic and strategic challenges.
He is a rather busy man.
Since officially taking over UAC on 19
J anuary, Slyusar has bounced from issue to
issue. A depreciating rouble has driven up the
cost of imported systems from suppliers,
“The economic turmoil has led
us to promise the board a sort
of anti-crisis programme”
YURI SLYUSAR
Chief executive, United Aircraftwhile Western sanctions are threatening
Russian access to a globalised supply chain
and c ustomer base. Meanwhile, crushing debt
has been jeopardising the stability of UAC’s
premier commercial aircraft programme – the
Sukhoi Superjet.HOMEGROWN TECHNOLOGY
On top of these considerable external
pressures there are new domestic forces. For
the past 15 years, UAC had championed col-
laboration and partnership with Western sup-
pliers, which now provide many of the en-
gines, avionics and other systems for the
Superjet and Irkut MC-21.
But Slyusar is open to calls from Russian
government industry sources to integrate
more homegrown and sanction-free Russian
technology, while also turning east to culti-
vate even closer ties to aerospace industries in
China and India.
With so many raging issues swirling
around the company, achieving stability
seems to be Slyusar’s focus so far. Asked ifSuperJet International
UAC sees the Superjet programme as critical to its credibility in the commercial market
As the new head of state-owned UAC,
Yuri Slyusar is grappling with a global
outlook quite unlike what his predeces-
sors were anticipating just five years ago