Russia’s MiG gets air under its wings

Dubai: Russia’s aircraft manufacturer MiG is on the way to recovery from the financial crisis, a Russian defence expert said. The company, once the flagship of Russia’s fighter plane industry, was on the brink of bankruptcy in 2008 after orders declined due to quality problems.

But according to Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy director of the Russian Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, MiG is now ready for lift-off after the Russian government injected 750 million euros (Dh348.9 million) into it over the last years and merged MiG with Ilyushin, Irkut, Sukhoi, Tupolev and Yakovlev to a new company named United Aircraft Corporation (Obyedinyonnaya Aviasroitelnaya Korporatsiya, OAK).

Since then, MiG was able to cut its 1.3 billion euro debt pile by half and receive a couple of new orders.

“There is strong lobbying going on within the Russian government,” a Dubai-based Russian business man engaged in defence business told Gulf News on conditions of anonymity.

“The fighter jet brand has a long history and there are people at very high decision levels that want MiG to stay alive. Some may call it nostalgic, I would say its bare-knuckle business.”

On orders of Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin himself MiG’s debts at major Russian banks such as Alpha Bank and Sberbank have been restructured, and soon after MiG received an order worth 600 million euros from the Russian defence ministry.

Other fresh orders came from Myanmar, Kazakhstan and India. Negotiations with Slovakia are ongoing. Overall, MiG’s order books currently show a 5 billion euro backlog and the company is expected to produce about 100 jets a year, which comes close to the high-volume production in times of the Soviet Union, Makiyenko said in a current analysis.

India in particular has turned out as a faithful customer of MiG jets. After a large order of MiG-29 fighters for the Indian Air Force, New Delhi now wants 20 more combat jets for its Navy.

MiG was founded in 1939 and introduced its first jet in 1940, during the Second World War. Later, MiG jets were the best known Soviet combat planes during the Cold War. The MiG-15 was one of the first successful swept-wing jet fighters, and it achieved fame in the skies over Korea and Vietnam.

The most popular model up to now is the MiG-29.