Ilyushin Il-114-300 Regional Airliner Performs Maiden Flight

Il-114 History

30 years ago, the original Il-114 performed its maden flight. The type received type certification in 1997, and started revenue services in 2000. In Uzbekistan’s capital city of Tashkent, Ilyushin’s design house developed a prototype and the TAPO factory built 17 more.

Up until May 2018, the last production examples flew on the route network of Uzbekistan Airways (HY). Today, Russia operates as a test bed for maritime defense systems with only one example.

Following a cold East-West partnership, the Kremlin agreed to re-launch development of the Il-114 turboprop at RAC MiG in place of an earlier attempt to license the Bombardier Q400 twin turboprop for production.

Il-114 Design

The Il-114-300 is designed to accommodate 68 passenger seats and can cruise at a speed of 270 knots to a full-payload range of 755 nautical miles. At the RAC MiG plant in Lukhovitsy, in the Moscow Region, UAC assigned the final assembly of the fuselages and the entire aircraft. Significant sub-assemblies will be collected from Sokol, Aviastar in Ulyanovsk, and VASO in Voronezh.

The Il-114-300 is comprised almost exclusively of Russian vendor products under orders from the Kremlin. This is more notably seen in the replacement of the Pratt & Whitney PW127 engines with the Klimov powerplants in the Il-114-100. Separately, a similar kit from Russia’s KRET gives way to the Collins avionics system. The Il-114-300 features a glass cockpit for two Pilots on five large-format multifunction screens.

The first Il-114-300 turboprop takes off on December 16 from the Zhukovsky airfield outside Moscow. Photo:UAC