United Aircraft Corporation

As of October 2026 – A Superjet in Aeroflot livery on the apron in Istanbul, a Tu-154 in a museum, an Il-76 at an air show in the Gulf: as different as these aircraft are, they now have the same owner. The United Aircraft Corporation, UAC for short, is the state holding company under which Russia has bundled almost its entire aircraft industry since 2006. Sukhoi, Ilyushin, Tupolev, Yakovlev and MiG are no longer independent competitors but brands and design bureaus of a single group. For spotters, UAC is therefore the key to understanding Russian aviation – even if you hardly get to see its current jets in Europe anymore.

From design bureau to state holding

In the Soviet Union, aircraft manufacturing was organized differently than in the West. The design bureaus – OKB in Russian – designed the aircraft, and they were built in state plants that often produced several types from different bureaus. This is how classics like the Tu-154, the Il-62 or the Yak-42 came about. How this era shaped aviation in the East is shown in the article Soviet airliners.

After the end of the Soviet Union, this system fell apart. The bureaus and plants became independent companies, some with private shareholders, and fought over scarce orders. In the 2000s, Russian airlines increasingly bought used and new jets from Airbus and Boeing, and domestic production shrank to a few units per year.

The state’s answer was consolidation. On February 20, 2006, President Vladimir Putin signed decree No. 140 founding the United Aircraft Corporation – in Russian Objedinjonnaja awiastroitelnaja korporazija, OAK for short. The founding companies contributed their shares: Ilyushin, Irkut, Mikoyan, Sukhoi, Tupolev and Yakovlev. Further plants and bureaus were added later, such as Beriev in Taganrog, the large Aviastar-SP plant in Ulyanovsk and the Voronezh aircraft plant VASO.

In 2015 the company was converted into a public joint-stock company, and in the same year Yury Slyusar took over the leadership. In 2018 the state transferred its shares to Rostec, the state corporation for industry and defense, which has been the majority owner ever since. Since November 2024, Vadim Badekha has led the group; he was previously head of the engine group ODK (internationally United Engine Corporation). According to reference works, around 100,000 people work for the holding.

The brands under the roof

What matters for you at the fence: the old names have not disappeared. They live on as design bureaus, plants and brands. That causes confusion, because an aircraft shows up in databases sometimes under the bureau, sometimes under the plant or under the group.

The plants play a special role. Aviastar-SP in Ulyanovsk once built the Tu-204 and the giant freighter An-124 from Antonov, and today mainly the modernized Il-76MD-90A. In Kazan the Tu-214 and military Tupolev types are built, and in Voronezh the Il-96 is assembled. A separate branch of the group bundles financing, including leasing and finance companies that rent aircraft to airlines.

The reorganization of the civil division

For a long time, the civil projects worked separately. The Superjet was developed by the subsidiary Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, and the MC-21 came about at Irkut in Irkutsk. In 2017 UAC began merging both into one civil division, and at the end of 2018 the Superjet company moved under the roof of Irkut. This division also includes the Yakovlev design bureau and the composites specialist AeroComposit.

In August 2023 came the next step: Irkut began operating under the long-established name Yakovlev. The Sukhoi Superjet 100 became the SJ-100, and the MC-21 also runs under the new brand. In parallel, Mikoyan and Sukhoi were folded directly into the parent company in 2022.

Superjet 100 / SJ-100: the first new regional jet

The Superjet 100 was the first major civil project of the new holding. It first flew on May 19, 2008, in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and entered scheduled service in April 2011 with Armenia’s Armavia. Shortly after, Aeroflot took over its first aircraft and became the largest operator. According to available data, more than 200 have been built by now.

Unlike the Soviet classics, the Superjet was designed to be international from the start. The SaM146 engines came from a joint venture between Safran and the Russian manufacturer NPO Saturn, many systems came from Western suppliers, and the Italian group Leonardo was involved in sales. That is how the jet reached the West too: Mexico’s Interjet operated it from 2013, and Ireland’s CityJet flew Superjets for several years, among other things on behalf of Brussels Airlines – back then the type was even in scheduled service in Western Europe.

Since 2022 that path has been blocked. Western engines, spare parts and avionics may no longer be delivered. UAC is therefore developing a version with Russian components, powered by the new PD-8 engine. The first flights of this version took place in 2025. Certification testing was still under way in October 2026, and officials most recently named 2027 as the target for certification and first deliveries. How to tell the Superjet apart from other regional jets is shown in the article Identifying regional jets.

MC-21: the medium-haul jet

The MC-21 – MS-21 in Russian – was supposed to be the big breakthrough: a modern narrowbody jet in the class of the A320neo and the Boeing 737 MAX. Its most striking feature is the long, slender composite wing, which gives the jet an elegant profile. The first flight took place on May 28, 2017, in Irkutsk, back then with PW1400G engines from Pratt & Whitney. At the end of 2020, an aircraft with the Russian PD-14 engine flew for the first time.

The sanctions hit the program twice. Even before 2022, deliveries of Western composite materials stalled, and from 2022 engines and systems dropped out as well. UAC had to replace numerous components with Russian developments – from wing material to avionics. According to the aviation authority, the version with Russian equipment had completed not even half of the planned certification flights by October 2026. First deliveries to Aeroflot are expected for 2027, according to the trade press.

Tu-214, Il-114-300 and Il-96

Besides the two prestige projects, UAC relies on older designs that are easier to convert to Russian components.

• Tu-204/Tu-214: The twin-engine medium-haul jet dates from the late 1980s. The Tu-214 is built in Kazan, for a long time mainly for government and special-flight squadrons. In December 2025, the aviation authority approved a version with Russian avionics. So far only a few units per year are being built. More about the history of the design bureau is on the page about Tupolev.
• Il-114-300: The modernized turboprop for up to 68 passengers is intended mainly as a replacement for the aging An-24 on routes in remote regions. It first flew on December 16, 2020, and received its type certificate on June 5, 2026.
• Il-96: The four-engine widebody from Voronezh flies today mainly for the Russian government and a very few operators such as Cubana. Plans for a modernized long-haul version have existed for years.

For long haul, UAC currently has no series-production type on a large scale. The widebody project CR929, begun together with COMAC, left Russia in 2023 – China has continued developing it on its own since then as the C929.

The classics in the legacy

Besides the current programs, UAC manages the legacy of the great Soviet design bureaus. Many of these types are icons for spotters, even though they are long out of production:

The story of the Soviet supersonic jet is told in the article Tupolev Tu-144. How to identify vintage aircraft in the sky in general is covered in Spotting vintage aircraft in the sky.

How to recognize UAC aircraft

Because UAC spans so many generations, there is no uniform corporate look. A few basic rules help anyway.

Where you can see UAC aircraft

Honestly: in everyday life, hardly anymore in Central Europe. Since February 2022, EU airspace has been closed to Russian airlines, and Switzerland and the UK no longer let them land either. With Aeroflot, Transaero and the freighter Volga-Dnepr, the best-known operators of Russian types have disappeared from the skies of Germany, Austria and Switzerland – Transaero already in 2015 anyway. If you want an active UAC jet in your lens today, you have to travel.

The classics are easiest to reach. In Germany, Soviet airliners and military aircraft stand, for example, at the Flugausstellung Hermeskeil, at the Flugplatzmuseum Cottbus and at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin. It is best to check what exactly you will find there on each museum’s page before your visit.

UAC compared with Airbus, Boeing and COMAC

On the world market, UAC plays hardly any role in civil aircraft manufacturing today. While Airbus and Boeing deliver hundreds of jets every year, the civil UAC programs are in the range of a few units. The customers come almost exclusively from Russia itself, where airlines have depended on domestic aircraft since 2022 because Western spare parts and new aircraft are missing.

In the regional jet segment, the Superjet competed before 2022 with Embraer and its E-Jets and with Bombardier and the CRJ family. The MC-21 targets the same segment as COMAC’s C919. The comparison with China is interesting: both countries want to break away from Western manufacturers, but COMAC can still access Western engines, while UAC has to develop almost everything itself. Militarily, on the other hand, the group with Sukhoi and MiG is one of the world’s major combat aircraft manufacturers.

Photo tips for UAC types

How to classify such finds and why they count especially in your collection is explained in the articles Spotting rare aircraft and How rare is my sighting?.

Conclusion

The United Aircraft Corporation is the result of an industrial-policy feat of strength: in 2006, Russia united its fragmented aircraft industry under one state roof. Sukhoi, Ilyushin, Tupolev, Yakovlev and MiG became brands and design bureaus of a group that today is majority-owned by Rostec. In the civil sector almost everything hangs on two programs, the SJ-100 and the MC-21, which are being converted to Russian components after the sanctions and whose schedules keep slipping.

For spotters in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, UAC aircraft are therefore mainly two things: rare guests on trips to Turkey, the Gulf or even farther away – and classics in museums. If you know the designs and watch for RA registrations and type designators, you can still identify them with confidence.