A factory beyond Lake Baikal

Irkut began as an order on paper. On 28 March 1932 the Soviet People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry issued order No. 181 to build an aircraft plant at Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal, thousands of kilometres from any front. Its first product was the Tupolev I-14 monoplane fighter, which flew from the plant on 16 February 1935, and from the spring of 1936 it mass-produced the Tupolev SB bomber. In October 1941, with German armies near Moscow, the capital’s Plant No. 39 was evacuated to Irkutsk, and from 19 December 1941 the two operated as one enterprise, Plant No. 39.

Bombers for the front

The war made Irkutsk a bomber works. It built Petlyakov Pe-2 dive bombers from 1941 and Pe-3 fighters, then the long-range Ilyushin Il-4 and Yermolayev Yer-2. After the war came the Tu-2, the Tu-14 torpedo bomber and the Il-28 jet bomber, then the Antonov An-12 transport from the late 1950s and the supersonic Yak-28 through the 1960s. From 1970 the plant made MiG-23UB trainers and MiG-27 fighter-bombers, and in 1982 its specialists helped set up licence production of the MiG-27 in India, the start of a relationship that would define the company.

From MiG-27s to the Su-30

The decisive turn was Sukhoi. The plant built the Su-27UB two-seat trainer, which flew on 10 September 1986, and developed from it the two-seat Su-30 multirole fighter, whose first Irkutsk-built example flew on 14 April 1992. The factory became the Irkutsk Aviation Production Association in 1989 and was privatised in 1992. On 30 December 1996 it signed a contract with India for the Su-30MKI; in December 2000 a deal for full technology transfer was concluded at Irkutsk, and India’s HAL went on to build most of the 272 the Indian Air Force received. Su-30 variants also went to China, Malaysia, Algeria, Indonesia and Venezuela.

India’s fighter and Russia’s first defence IPO

In December 2002 the association renamed itself Irkut Corporation, and in March 2004 it became the first Russian defence company to float on the stock market, selling 23.3 per cent of its shares. That year it absorbed the Yakovlev Design Bureau and, on 20 December 2004, signed with Airbus to make A320 components including the nose landing-gear bay and keel beam. In 2006 the state folded Irkut, with Ilyushin, Mikoyan, Sukhoi, Tupolev and Yakovlev, into the United Aircraft Corporation. Irkut also built the Beriev Be-200 amphibian, which first flew on 24 September 1998, and produced the Yak-130 trainer from 2008.

MC-21, sanctions and a new name

In 2007 Irkut was chosen to lead the MC-21 single-aisle airliner, the first airliner it designed itself; the prototype flew on 28 May 2017. Russian type certification of the Pratt & Whitney-powered MC-21-300 came in December 2021, but after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 European certification was denied, sanctions followed, and the aircraft had to be re-engineered around the Russian PD-14 engine. In 2018 UAC had transferred the Superjet programme to Irkut, making it the group’s airliner division, and in August 2023 Irkut renamed itself Yakovlev.

Továrny

• Irkutsk Aviation Plant · Irkutsk, Siberia — Test flying from Irkutsk-2 airfield next to the plant

Lidé

• Oleg Demchenko · president of Irkut Corporation — In office in 2014
• Andrey Boginsky · general director

Rekordy a prvenství

• First Russian defence company to hold an initial public offering, March 2004
• First on the Russian market to receive EN 9100 quality certification, 2009