Jahangir Asgarov, the General Director of Azerbaijan Airlines State Company, informed Trend that French airliners ATR will be supplied to Azerbaijan starting from August 2007.
The Azerbaijani State Concern AZAL is going to acquire six 40-50-seat airliners of Aerospatiale French ATR and they will be delivered by 2008.
The French airplanes are more effective than other airplanes of this class in two times. At the same time, Azerbaijan has not officially refused to acquire airplanes from Ukraine, one of which sustained crash in December of last year. It can occur after the announcement of official conclusion on the reasons of jet crash.
Till the definition of the reasons of the crash, AZAL stopped to purchase and exploit airplanes РђN-140-100. The РђN-140-100 airplanes were acquired on base of the contract signed between AZAL and Kharkov State Aviation Enterprise on July 8, 2004.
The contract also envisages training of flight personnel and technical support to airliners. The contract costs $36.4mln ($9.1mln per one airliner).