The delivery of the first three Il-96-300s was taken by Cubana under an export contract with Russian leasing company Ilyushin Finance Co. in 2005-2006.They have a 262-seat layout (18 seats in business class and 244 in economy class). Except for the Rossiya special air detachment performing no commercial flights, Cubana de Aviacion is the only carrier operating the Il-96-300 on passenger services now.

As is known, Aeroflot wrapped up the operation of its Il-96-300s in spring this year and offered them for sale. As far as the calendar service life without life extension is concerned, the planes can fly until 2016-2020, and their remaining service life ranges from 14% to 35% - 10,000 h to 25,000 h depending on a particular aircraft.

Unfortunately, there was fire on board RA-96010 during its maintenance on 3 June 2014, and the aircraft is likely to be written off. Early in July 2014, Aeroflot Director General Vitaly Savelyev told the media that Ilyushin Finance Co. was intent on buying at least two of the five remaining Il-96-300s. Its long-time Cuban partners displayed interest in the aircraft. The first of the five remaining Il-96-300s, RA-96008 (c/n 01005, produced in 1993), which had the lowest flight time among Aeroflot's Il-96-300s (45,000 flight hours), had been groomed by the end of the summer for the delivery to the new customer. Its acceptance flight in Sheremetyevo following almost five months of sitting on the ground (it conducted Aeroflot's last regular Il-96-300 flight on 31 March 2014) took place on 26 August, and the airliner departed for its new station two weeks later.

The future of the four remaining Aeroflot-owned Il-96s is unclear yet. Possibly, RA-96011 will be bought by Ilyushin Finance Co. and sold to Cuba in RA-96008's footsteps. The future of the other three planes has been pinned on the Red Wings airline until recently, but the latter is in favour of doing without them for now.

(Photo: Sergei Sergeyev)