- Alexander Ivanovich, is it possible to say so that the new situational centre seems to be implementing the concept of  the “single window”?

- At the end of 2018, there were 136 SSJ100 aircraft in operation. We have a terminal, which receives information from all our clients. We made it together with our Italian colleagues. Here come various kinds of messages, primarily electronic ones. Some of our airlines prefer not to enter the terminal, but send their inquiries directly via e-mail, some call. Basically these are electronic requests that come here, and we distribute this work across all of our departments. Convenience is that now all the engineers and round-the-clock situation centre in the same building. They analyse the situation with those aircraft that are on scheduled maintenance, and those that are in operation. This customer support centre, with dramatically expanded capacity, is about 2.5 times compared to what was in terms of the number of engineers, the number of screens, in terms of communication, which is now quite well provided. Of course, this is still not enough to fully satisfy our customers. But the first steps have been taken and this is the beginning of a serious movement forward.

- I understand that the very idea of ​​creating such a centre has been discussed for a long time. Why was it open just now?

- The time has come. Technology has matured, determination has matured due to the move to a new building. I will not say that he fully meets our aspirations, we are at the very beginning of the road. But this qualitatively changes our capabilities. The old centre was small, uncomfortable, there were always problems with communication. Here we could, by investing decent money, make it comfortable enough for round-the-clock work. There is a lounge, a dining room for the night shift. This service does not stop on Saturdays or Sundays, nor on holidays.

The second basic information, we are now completing this work - information on the availability of spare parts in all warehouses. We see what is in warehouses in Venice, in Munich, in Zhukovsky. This year we invested quite a lot of money in warehouses in Russia - about 3 billion rubles, bringing their volumes from 6.5 billion to 11 billion rubles - 4 million units of storage in a warehouse in Zhukovsky. This is not counting those that our foreign partners have. For 8 months we managed to carry out a complete re-equipment of the warehouse in Zhukovsky without stopping his work. All this was computerised, automated, put things in order, put new mechanised racks. And now we have practically brought everything together into a single information network, where our operators, having received a request from a customer, can literally within a few minutes spare part either from us, or in Venice, or in Munich, from the warehouse that is closest to the customer, and send it.

We also organised the work of a new warehouse directly in Sheremetyevo, under the implementation of a new contract with Aeroflot and signed an agreement for a long-term lease of the hangar in Zhukovsky, where we will have a supply centre. We have a big overload of the centre in Zhukovsky, because we have more than tripled the volume of work on service bulletins and maintenance. This is all due to the fact that work is underway to improve the aircraft and introduce labor-intensive service bulletins for 2017–18. We are expanding our aircraft repair and maintenance facilities in Zhukovsky. We are adding an additional hangar for the supply centre, respectively, additional capacity for two cars for maintenance and repair, which are in very high demand, is released.

The technical centres of our colleagues at Tulpar, S7 and SJI in Venice are also involved in this work. We have signed additional agreements and work very closely with independent maintenance and repair providers in Russia C7 Engineering and Tulpar, which also serve our customers.

As the geography of aircraft sales expands, we will create a warehouse and organisation that will serve the aircraft in Southeast Asia. We also expect to create an MRO centre in the Middle East. And since we have one customer in Zambia, we think about Africa. I will not say that we have finally decided where, there are several options.

- Is it possible for you to understand that the maintenance network created for the SuperJet is also useful for MC-21?

- Naturally. For example, a new warehouse in Sheremetyevo, which will still be filled with spare parts for the SuperJet, as we approach the start of deliveries of MC-21 to Aeroflot, we will begin to fill with spare parts for the MC, while planning to double the warehouse area. Secondly, we have agreed with Aeroflot that we are largely taking on investment in the construction of a hangar centre and an MRO centre in Sheremetyevo, in the region of the third lane. So that the deficit of hangar facilities, which Aeroflot now has, and which also affects the situation with the fleet serviceability, should be closed. We hope that in the near future we will enter into a contract and the construction of these hangars will begin, so that by 2020 they will be able to service about 6 SSJ100 and 2-3 MC-21 there simultaneously.

- Considering the fact that there will be unification, can we assume that the operational situation centre, recently created to support the SuperJet, will serve the MC-21 customers?

- We are trying everything that concerns mathematics, everything that concerns software, to work on the project SSJ100. It is clear that there will be an intersection with customers, and making two different centres, taking into account future unification, is an obvious nonsense. Therefore, most likely, we will create a single platform. The centre, which is now created, is made with a margin of power and it is designed to double the capacity. Accordingly, if everything is normal, then in the next few years we can fully serve the MSC-21 program, using the centre that already exists. We are working on improving it so that the information is comprehensive, so that the engineers can see and feel what is happening with the fleet, and work all the time in advance.

Before that, we worked in jet mode. And pro-active mode - when we see online information that allows us to respond faster. And the second part, which we are going to use in the future, is the so-called virtual assistants of engineers - electronic prompts. There are special glasses - augmented virtual reality, which allow you to project through the Internet network data on how to correct the defect in place. For our engineers and airline engineers who will encounter problems when they come on board, besides the hints from the engineer of the centre, what needs to be done will be an electronic prompt. There was a demonstration of this new technology and our engineers really liked it. This year we will test this technology in coordination with one or two airlines. If we get positive feedback, we will implement. It is clear that this greatly simplifies the work of our technicians to troubleshoot and quickly find a solution to the problem. 

- You somehow mentioned about the electronic passport of the aircraft. What it is?

- We have signed a contract with one of the Russian companies, which offered us a service under the conditional call “electronic passport of the aircraft.” Previously, this service was implemented on another software product. Now our colleagues have made a more modern version, which actually describes the state of the entire aircraft, all PKI from the date of production, and traces its life, all failures, all repairs. It is more modern, faster, more adapted to work with the databases of our foreign suppliers. And this information online flows to us in the GSS. You see the history of the car from the inside, the history of each electronic unit, every detail, resource residues. Accordingly, we have the opportunity to monitor the status of the aircraft, its systems.

This provides very important information for our engineers in terms of statistics, which often fails, what to look for. Gives information for our buyers, what to buy, what spare parts. And the information for the support centres - they see that a failure has occurred, they see that they need to be urgently responded, they need either repair or the supply of spare parts, or both. We are just starting to implement the concept of an electronic passport on two airlines. In the future, if everything goes well, we will transfer the entire fleet to such an electronic passport, which will allow us to constantly have information about the condition of the aircraft and respond more quickly to the real tasks that the exploitation puts us. You see when you have another repair or replacement. You can plan ahead. If you do not see this, if you have all this in paper form, imagine you have 150 aircraft in operation, every day someone has to watch how much the plane has flown, how many remnants of its resources, respectively, for planners it is a nightmare. Electronic passport allows you to do this multiple times faster and more efficiently.