The Federal Air Transport Agency will switch the flight schools, equipped with Yak-18T and An-2 aircraft and also the Mi-8T helicopters, which are of little use in pilot training, over to foreign aircraft, Izvestiya reports.

As reported by the Federal Air Transport Agency, 2.9 billion rubles have been spent on the acquisition of aircraft and simulators from the budget in 2011.

The flight schools will acquire 25 aircraft (14 single-engine and nine twin-engine aircraft and two helicopters). The aviation authorities plan to acquire Austrian Diamond DA 40s (single-engine) and DA 42, Czech twin-engine L-410, and light European AS350 helicopters manufactured by Eurocopter.

The Federal Air Transport Agency will conduct the public auction in the beginning of October on delivery of 9 single-engine trainers in the network of the program implementation.

The contract’s trigger price (maximal) is set at 335 million rubles and the average proce of one aircraft is 37,250 million rubles including their delivery and maintenance during the length of warranty. The price has been set during the analysis of average prices of aircraft made by Diamond Aircraft or Cessna Aircraft (12 Cessna-172s are owned by the St. Petersburg since 2009). The acquired aircraft will be delivered to the Ulyanovsk Higher Civil Aviation School.

Simulators for the modern Russian aircraft such as An-148 and SSJ-100, Ka-32 and Mi-8 helicopters and Boeing 737 NG aircraft, will be delivered to the flight schools in 2012. The contracts on delivery of six simulators have already been signed and their total amount is around 1 billion rubles.

The renewal of flight schools’ fleet is intended to be carried out simultaneously with the reconstruction of training airfields. 418 million rubles will be spent on the repair of Sasovo (Ryazan Region), owned by Ulyanovsk Higher Civil Aviation School, and Buguruslan (Orenburg Region).

The Federal Target Program “Development of Russian Transport System (2010 - 2015)» assumes the allocation of 12 billion rubles for acquisition of aircraft and 21 billion rubles – for acquisition of simulators. During the first year of the program, 5 Austrian DA 42 turboprop twin-engine aircraft, 5 special simulators for flight operation and 9 ones for technical operation have been delivered to the flight schools.