New paint shop for Belarus’ capital airport

Last year, Minsk Civil Aviation Plant 407 relocated to the Minsk International Airport, where a new paint shop is to be built :: Minsk Civil Aviation Plant 407

A new paint shop for foreign- and Soviet-built aircraft is to be constructed at Belarus, within the capital’s Minsk airport, where Civil Aviation Plant 407 has been newly situated since the middle of last year. It is scheduled to be operational by the end of 2020, according to Alexei Avramenko, Belarus’ minister for transport and communications.

“The construction of a new building is necessary to provide a wide range of services: to perform maintenance, painting, and to store aircraft. This will allow the plant to attract additional orders, ensure the inflow of currency into the country and increase competitiveness of the enterprise,” the minister revealed in an interview with the Belarusian wire agency BELTA.

Originally, the aircraft repair centre performed painting tasks on only Tupolev Tu-134, Yakovlev Yak-40, Yak-42, Yak-52, Embraer, Bombardier CRJ and Hawker aircraft, as well as helicopters. However, after the plant was relocated from the territory of the currently closed old Minsk airport, a maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) hangar, with an area of 18,000 square meters, was built on the territory of the new international airport in 2018.

Currently, the plant still overhauls such aircraft types as the Tu-134, Yak-40, Yak-42, Yak-52, and performs maintenance for all modifications of the Yak-40, Yak-42, and Tu-134. The hangar holds up to eight Tu-134s. In the future, the aircraft repair plant plans to provide maintenance services for western-built aircraft.

The representative of the aircraft repair plant also noted to Russian Aviation Insider that, along with obtaining approvals for aircraft maintenance and repair services on western units, the paint shop is to broaden its range of services. However, it is too early to specify dates and types of aircraft.

Evgeny Vaitsehovich, the general director of Minsk Civil Aviation Plant 407, told local media that potential customers will be attracted from the Russian market, and also that services will be offered to the Belarus national carrier Belavia. It will be possible to paint up to 50 aircraft per year at Minsk airport.

By comparison, the largest aircraft paint shop in Russia and neighbouring countries – Spektr-Avia (based at Ulyanovsk Vostochny airport) – plans to double its production capacities up to 70-100 aircraft in 2020.

Another major paint facility in Russia is S7 Technics’ Mineralnye Vody-based aircraft painting centre and aircraft paintwork is also available in former Soviet regions at Magnetic MRO, the Estonia-based provider of aircraft technical care, and at Uzbekistan Airways Technics in Uzbekistan.