MOSCOW, February 12 (RIA Novosti) - Russian aircraft maker Sukhoi will compensate national flagship airline Aeroflot for all losses resulting from periods of unserviceability affecting the airline’s new Sukhoi Superjet 100's, the Sukhoi press office reported on Tuesday.
“Under the previously signed agreement, the Sukhoi Civil Aviation Company will compensate the airline for financial losses that may result from downtime for technical reasons, with compensation to be paid for each day of such delay,” Sukhoi said in a statement.
Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia has ordered Aeroflot to suspend the airworthiness certificates of four out the ten SSJ-100 jets delivered to Aeroflot, Business daily Vedomosti reported on ‘Tuesday. Neither Aeroflot or Rosaviatsia would comment on the situation.
Sukhoi said it expects commercial flights by the four grounded Aeroflot aircraft to be resumed by the end of February.
"The aircraft are currently being fixed in accordance with the previously issued servicing bulletin," Sukhoi said. "The first two aircraft will resume service by the end of this week and the others by the end of the month."
Aeroflot officials have complained about various operational and servicing issues with the short--medium-haul airliner. Sukhoi said problems had been detected with false readings in the aircraft's leak warning system, failure of the wing slats to deploy and undercarriage retraction problems.
Aeroflot is the largest SSJ-100 customer with a total order for 30 airliners.
