Please start with this story. This is rather alarming news.
We did a quick search on FlightRadar24 to see what might be flying as Cubana. The results are sobering. There is one flight and it’s not even their aircraft. Who knew the 737-200 could manage Montreal-Havana non-stop?
Then taking a look at the Superjet fleet at Interjet. The airline has 22 in service with three more to come. The fleet averages under five years old. At the time of writing, there were four flying.
There was a report of technical challenges on the fleet. The “sweet deal” were the SSJ100 was priced at a capital cost of 10 aircraft roughly equal to the pre-delivery payment for one Airbus A320 might be seen a bit differently. Then in January, there was another report about this fleet.
In the second report note that the airline CEO stated “The supply chain with this aircraft has been a process. But we’re getting to where we want to be with them.” To ease maintenance problems, a $7 million consignment stock is being set up this year with Sukhoi parts, he said. “The decision to buy them was a technical and economical one,” he says, calling the deal an “extraordinary acquisition agreement” the company wouldn’t have gotten from Brazilian maker Embraer SA.”
A strange way of putting it. Had they deployed Embraer‘s they would not have needed those spares and there would be no parked planes.
Cubana is chartering or leasing the 737-200 from Nolinor Aviation, a Canadian operator which does a lot of flying between the south and far north of Québec province.
Usually, Cubana’s flights from YUL are performed with a (black) A320.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALEuZjTeyls