Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation is preparing the ground for a new commercial version of the Ilyushin Il-76 heavy military transport aircraft. “The deliveries of new Il-76TD-90A [aircraft] are to begin from 2028”, Daniil Brenerman, managing director of UAC’s subsidiary Il, declared, expecting that the new version could gather up to 100 orders.
Il-76TD-90A will be a commercial derivative of Il-76MD-90A military transport, which UAC has been assembling at its facility in Ulyanovsk for the Russian military since 2012. The latter aircraft, in its turn, is an upgrade of the Soviet-era Il-76MD, which first flew in 1971.
The upgraded transport has its four older 12 tonnes thrust D-30KP2 turbofans replaced by PS-90A-76 powerplants which provided thrust of 14.5 tonnes. The aircraft received modern avionics, an improved wing and reinforced landing gear that increased its takeoff weight from 190 to 210 tonnes and its payload from 47 to 60 tonnes. It has a range of up to 5,000 kilometres with 52 tonnes of payload.
The program also faced another challenge as the Il-76MD-90A assembly line had to be launched from scratch in Ulyanovsk. The baseline transports were manufactured at Tashkent aviation plant in Uzbekistan, which was closed in 2014.
UAC hasn’t reported when it can start the certification trials of the new freighter, but has already paved the way for legal grounds for this. The manufacturer obtained type certificates from Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency for the current commercial versions – Il-76TD-90 and Il-76TD-90VD. This enables to document the aircraft’s standard design, technical parameters and operational limitations and fix new subsequent changes to the aircraft’s design, the agency’s head, Dmitry Yadrov, explained.
Before that, these two modifications had only approvals issued by the Interstate Aviation Committee, a certification body for former Soviet republics.
In fact, Il-76TD-90VD served as prototype for Il-76MD-90A as it became the first modification which received PS-90A engines, reinforced aerostructure and glass cockpit. Its development was inspired by the Russian private carrier Volga-Dnepr in the early 2000s.
This airline was the first one to carry oversized cargo on the commercial version of another former military transport – a giant Antonov An-124. It started to use baseline Il-76TDs from 1992 but realized that the type had serious limitations on many foreign markets due to noisy and dirty D-30KP engines. So, the airline financed the development of the new PS-90A-76 in 2001 and later the upgrade of the aircraft itself.
“It was a significant achievement of Volga-Dnepr, which invested money in the [aircraft] development,” Alexey Leonov, who dealt with the certification issues in Volga-Dnepr from 1995 to 2020, told Air Cargo Week. He recalled that this was an important boost for Ilyushin too as the design bureau had no other customers at that time.
Il-76MD-90VD can accommodate 50 tonnes of loads through the rear ramp door. It has a flight range of 4,500 kilometres and can operate all over the world, meeting the ICAO noise and emission requirements. Volga-Dnepr purchased five upgraded freighters from Tashkent in the late 2000s and still flies four of them. Thanks to Improved avionics and ability to land on unpaved runways, it used these aircraft to deliver cargo to icy airfields in Antarctica for several seasons.
Azerbaijan’s Silk Way has also managed to buy two re-engined aircraft in Tashkent but in a less sophisticated Il-76TD-90 variant. According to UAC, more than 100 ageing Il-76TD in various modifications are still in service all over the world.
