"Our task is to make it to the top three of global aircraft industry leaders"

For a second time at MAKS, the Russian aircraft sector is represented by a combined exposition of United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). With the industry’s consolidation successfully completed, UAC now faces the task of helping Russia regain its leading position on the global aircraft market. The new head of the corporation, Mikhail Pogosyan, told Show Observer how UAC is going to achieve that goal.

—UAC made some 75 deliveries last year, including seven civil aircraft. What are your plans for 2011?
—We expect our production output in 2011 to beat the 2010 results. Our plan is to secure an overall increase of about 30% in deliveries of military and civilian products.

—Earlier this summer it was announced that the UAC structure was being overhauled to replace business units with program directorates. What is the rationale behind this reform?
— All changes to the corporation’s structure are necessitated by its strategic goals. We have set ourselves a very ambitious task of making it to the top three of global aircraft construction leaders by the year 2025.
The current restructuring of UAC is guided, first and foremost, by the necessity to adapt the corporation’s organizational structure to the tasks we are going to face in implementing the new strategy and the new program of innovative development, both of which were approved by the UAC Board of Directors earlier this year. We must synchronize the development timelines for aircraft programs and technologies, and ensure balanced distribution of resources at our subsidiary companies. We can only do this if we consolidate administration of all programs at the corporate level. We should place competitive products and their development programs at the core of our new administrative system. This is why, rather than [preserving the current dedicated specialization of individual] subsidiary companies, we are setting up [corporate-level] directorates to oversee our key areas of competence. By 2018 UAC plans to complete setting up vertically integrated divisions for commercial, transport, combat, and specialized aircraft.