An-22 Antei Cock - Assessment

In terms of its performance characteristics and combat capabilities, the An-22 aircraft was a significant milestone in the development of the Air Force military aviation, ahead of the United States in the creation of a similar aircraft. The An-22 aircraft No. 0101-46191 was first presented at the 26th International Aeronautics and Space Salon in Le Bourget on June 15, 1965. The first An-22 aircraft No. 0109-09301 arrived at the Ivanovo-Severny airfield in the 4th airfield of the 229th airborne regiment on January 10, 1969 from the factory airfield of the Tashkent Aviation Industrial Association named after. V.P. Chkalov (TAPO named after V.P. Chkalov) - ship commander, Colonel V.F. Yalin, onboard engineer-instructor captain Yu.K. Zakharov.

At different times, An-22 aircraft set and registered 41 world records with the FAI, transported tens of thousands of passengers and hundreds of thousands of tons of military and national economic cargo, including such unique ones as models of the Soyuz-1 and Mir spacecraft ", "Kvant", "Mars", etc. The dimensions of the cargo compartment (4.4x4.4, 4.4x26) meters made it possible to transport all the equipment in service with the Airborne Forces and ground forces, as well as most types of aircraft and weapons. After modifying the airframe and improving the directional stability of the aircraft (an additional upper section of the vertical tail was installed) on the An-22 aircraft No. 0203 by the crews of the ANTKB named after. OK. Antonov carried out unique transportation of wings and center sections of the An-124 “Ruslan” and An-225 “Mriya” aircraft from the TAPO airfield named after. Chkalov to the airfields "Ulyanovsk-Severny" and "Svyatoshino" Kyiv. During the flight operation of An-22 aircraft, the crews mastered airfields in 89 countries on 5 continents of the world.

The experience of 30 years of operation of An-22 aircraft in military transport aviation units revealed a number of miscalculations by the leadership of the MAP and the Air Force. The largest of them are:

1. Unjustified, without taking into account the needs of the country's Armed Forces, premature cessation of production of An-22 aircraft. From 1965 to 1975 The industry produced 68 An-22 aircraft of seven series, of which two aircraft No. 0101 and No. 0102 were produced at the ASTB named after. OK. Antonov and 66 aircraft at TAPO named after. V.P. Chkalova.

2. The absence of a state program for long-term operation and a concept for overhaul of An-22 aircraft led to the fact that two years after the cessation of their production at TAPO named after. V.P. Chkalov's stocks, stands and other equipment were dismantled. In subsequent years, this caused significant difficulties in organizing production, led to an increase in costs and an increase in time for the manufacture of various elements of the airframe, aircraft controls, pipelines, etc. that failed. For this reason, two An-22 aircraft received significant damage to the power elements of the airframe (No. 0209 when landing in 1987 at Addis Ababa airfield at night, in conditions of thunderstorm activity and rain; No. 0509 when taking off from Aden airfield, YPDR in 1989) were never restored to the BTA. After their partial restoration by the IAS specialists of the operating units for return to base airfields, they were transferred to other organizations: No. 0209 to the Monino Museum, No. 0509 to the ANTKB named after. OK. Antonov.

3. Ineffective use in flight operation of the capabilities inherent in a heavy strategic transport aircraft (25-40% of the total flight time for the year was used for cargo transportation, mainly flights were carried out in circles and routes) due to the lack of timely (during the development of the aircraft) delivery in terms of effective simulators (KTS-8 simulators were put into operation 3-5 years after the start of retraining the flight personnel of an aviation regiment for the aircraft), as well as an ill-thought-out program for retraining and maintaining piloting techniques for flight personnel (a large number of landings, since landings “from the assembly line” began to be mastered only 10 years after the start of flight operation of the aircraft) with an average flight time of 1.7 hours per 1 landing, which led to uneven exhaustion of the assigned life of the aircraft until the second CVR (service life 26 years, 2500+ 100 landings, 6500 hours). In 1995, two An-22 aircraft were written off due to the exhaustion of their landing life and the availability of a resource reserve by years and hours.

4. Representatives of military acceptance, due to their financial dependence on the management of factories, could not fulfill their duties in full (the quality of aircraft produced at TAPO named after V.P. Chkalov was low, acceptance of aircraft by unit personnel lasted for 2-3 months, with up to 1000 deficiencies were discovered). The bulletins introduced for modifications of the An-22 aircraft, as a rule, were not processed at the plant, the labor costs for their implementation were not adjusted, which led to an increase in the cost of the modifications performed and the An-22 aircraft as a whole. The implementation of bulletins issued in the late 80s to strengthen the wing, airframe, and landing gear became economically infeasible. Over the entire period of operation, 7 An-22 aircraft were lost in disasters and accidents. Thanks to the dedicated work of several generations of engineering and technical staff, close cooperation with the design bureau, and industry representatives, more than 1,600 bulletins were completed to improve the reliability of the aircraft and engine. All this made it possible to reduce the duration of preliminary training from two days (performed by a flight crew and ITS of 19 people to 5.5 hours by a crew of 9 people, while the flight time per failure in flight was 47 hours, the time per failure was 2.4 hours.