Earlier I had a post about an informal meeting of six presidents in Southern Russia. The President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov and Venezuelan President Hugo Chaves were also among them. There were no details given to the media about the objectives of that meeting, except for the images broadcasted on Russian TV of the presidents watching horse racing.

Nevertheless, recent developments suggest that the Uzbek president together with Russia’s Vladimir Putin have consolidated their efforts in aircraft cooperation and are lobbying the sale of a large number of Il-114 turboprop regional 64-seats-passenger jets to Venezuela, as was reported by the aviaport.ru. Currently, most of the Venezuelan airlines use various American cargo and passenger planes (the contract, when fully made, could be another sign of Venezuela distancing itself from the cooperation with the US).

Designed by Russia’s Ilyushin Aviation Complex, Il-114 has been in production at the Uzbek state-owned leading high-tech venture TAPOICh. The Ilyushin Il-114 has been designed to replace ageing fleet of Yakovlev Yak-40 and Antonov An-24 passenger jets that are currently in wide use in the CIS. The largest contract for 30 Il-114s has been made in 2006.

A conflict between TAPOICh and its Russian partners had evolved previously, due to the disagreement on prices and a delay of the production of cargo and military IL-76 planes, also in assembling at the Tashkent-based factory. Russian partners have  threatened to completely relocate the production of IL-76 from Uzbekistan to Russia. The problem seemed to have been resolved after the visit of Russian first deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov to Uzbekistan, as a result of which, TAPOICh merged with the Russian United Aircraft Corporation for the exchange of shares in it.