OREANDA-NEWS. On June 20, 2007 on the International Aerospace Show in Le Bourget JSC “Aeroflot – Russian Airlines” has signed a contract with Airbus Corporation to purchase 22 A350 airplanes. According contractual terms the airplanes purchased will be delivered between 2014 through 2017, reported the press-centre of JSC “Aeroflot”.

Aeroflot was the first Russian and CIS company to operate Airbus planes in 1992. Currently Aeroflot’s fleet includes 27 airplanes of A320 family, and before 2010 the company expects to have 55 airplanes of this type in its fleet. Aeroflot has own fully operational A320 flight simulator installed in the company’s own flight crews training center. In terms of operational reliability and actual in-flight hours per one airplane Aeroflot belongs to the top list of the world leaders. Average daily time in service per single A320 family airplane in Aeroflot is 13 hours.

A350 liners are capable to take onboard from 270 to 350 passengers, flight distances for this type of airplanes is up to 15 000 km. All the airplanes have quite similar handling qualities and cockpit layouts, and this facilitates flight crews training, as well as allows to have “universal” crews capable to flight on similar sirplanes.