Antonov rolls out first An-178 fuselage

Antonov rolled out on 29th of July fuselage of the first An-178. An-178 is cargo

version of An-148 which first flew in 2004.

An-178 should have 15 tons payload carrying capacity aimed at military customers.

So far the buyers of baseline An-148 were 85% located in Russia. According to

agency news aircraft fired interest from buyers in Iran and India at Farnborough

Airshow couple of weeks ago. Passanger version An-148 is also assembled in

Russia in paralel to Ukraine which does not seem to be the case with this latest

model An-178 which is only assembled in Antonov in Ukraine.

First fuselage is rolled out on dummy gears. The fuselage assembly jig is of a fixed

classical design.

First flight which was initially scheduled for 2014 is now postponed to 2015 and will

sell at between $20-25M. Company Antonov sees the market of up to 800 of these

aircraft but it not clear what percentage of this market would be targeted by Antonov.

The aircraft is seen as modern, more efficient replacement of An-12 which was built

in more than 1200 items and C-160 Transall. It will also come as lower cost

competition to Airbus Casa C-295 which sells at $28M and carries 9 tons.

Aircraft was at least partially being designed by state of the art CAD tools such as

Catia as can be seen on these photos.