Azerbaijan, Baku, 2 September /corr. Trend I.Khalilova / "In 2008 the State Airline of Azerbaijan CSC (AZAL) paid off nearly $40mln at the expense of its own funds," Head of AZAL, Jahangir Askerov, told on 2 September.
According to him, the payments were made on the credits borrowed from the foreign banks to acquire aircrafts Boeing, ATR, airbuses. ATR aircrafts are envisaged for the internal flights and flights to the neighboring countries.
"Over last period, the Air Company purchased six ATR aircrafts, eight Boeing aircrafts. There are plans to pay off nearly $15mln on the contracts by the end of the year," Askerov said.
In five years, AZAL will be continuing re-establishing its part of civil aviation, which currently has been re-established at 80%. According to the signed contract, by 2013 Azerbaijan will receive all ordered Boeing aircrafts (firstly six Boeing aircrafts were ordered, but later their number was increased up to eight). In addition, re-establishing the park envisages writing off the aircrafts of Russian production. Currently six Russian aircrafts have left.
The key ground of re-establishing the old Soviet aircrafts and avoiding Russian technique is the presence of counterfeit market of spare parts, delivering these spare parts to the official aviation plants. Due to instability in this market, instability in the price policy and quality of products, the Azerbaijani side decided to fully avoid Russian technique.
Exchange rate on 2 September is 0.8144 AZN/USD.
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