Aircraft
Crisis in Kiev can’t ground An-148
Although the political crisis in Ukraine kept Antonov engineers guessing about the timing of the first flight of the 52-seat An-148, the airplane took to t

Although the political crisis in Ukraine kept Antonov engineers guessing about the timing of the first flight of the 52-seat An-148, the airplane took to the air on December 17 from Kiev’s Svyatoshin Aerodrome. Scheduled for certification early next year, the first aircraft built in the former Soviet Union without direct public funding flew effortlessly over a crowd of onlookers, hungry for some symbol of stability in a country beset by unrest.

“The politics certainly had an influence on the flight schedule,” said Antonov sales and marketing chief Aleksandr Kiva. “No one can be immune to it here now…but we have an obligation to our airline customers [to start the flight-test program].”