Cuba continues to expand air fleet

Cubana de Aviación will continue to expand its commercial fleet with the purchase of at least 10 airliners AN-158, the Ukrainian daily Kommersant revealed Tuesday.

The AN-158 is manufactured by the Ukrainian firm Antonov. It can carry 99 passengers a maximum distance of 2,500 kilometers.

The Antonov company has already supplied Cuba with four AN-158s for domestic travel and planned to deliver three more next year. (Read “Ukraine will modernize Cuba’s air fleet” in Progreso Weekly of Sept. 5.)

However, during a visit to Cuba in October, Antonov’s chief designer, Dmitry Kiva, agreed with the Cuban Civil Air Corporation to supply at least ten more AN-158s.

Antonov’s deputy chief designer, Aleksandr Kiva, on Monday confirmed to the newspaper Kommersant that the agreement had been reached, but said that the contract had not yet been signed. He gave no details of the purchase, such as prices or delivery dates.

What he did say was that representatives of Antonov, the financial company Ilyushin Finance, and Cubana de Aviación are making tests to see how best to adapt the AN-158 for takeoffs and landings on high-elevation runways such as are found in Ecuador and Bolivia.

For example, El Alto Airport in La Paz, Bolivia, is 13,325 feet (4,061 meters) above sea level. At that altitude, the oxygen required for the engines to function best is very limited, and the planes need a long runway to take off and land.

In Ecuador, Quito International Airport is 7,800 feet (2,377 meters) above sea level.

For that reason, the AN-158 will have to be modified in several technical aspects. Andrei Lipovetsky, spokesman for Ilyushin Finance, said that once the AN-158 is certified for high-altitude landings, Antonov will be able to sell planes to Bolivia, Ecuador and other Andean countries, either directly or through Cuba.