
DATE: Tuesday, October 28, 1997             TAG: 9710280286

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY AKWELI PARKER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS                      LENGTH:  105 lines

U.S., RUSSIAN FIRMS JOIN TO BUILD CIVILIAN AIRPLANES

Even before E. Vernon Cartwright became a pilot at 15, flying was in his blood. His grandmother, says the entrepreneur and former Bank of Hampton Roads president, sewed fabric for the contraption that catapulted the Wright brothers into aviation history.

Now, the chairman and CEO of General Aircraft Corp. USA is looking to make history himself. He's teaming his company with Russia's Myasishchev design bureau to produce a line of small- to medium-sized civilian airplanes.

The two companies announced the historic East-West collaboration Monday during a news conference at Newport News-Williamsburg International Airport.

``Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a U.S. company to import a Russian-built aircraft,'' Ellis R. Mottur, acting secretary of trade development for the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration, said in a statement praising the arrangement.

Myasishchev will build the airframes in Russia, and General Aircraft in Newport News will outfit them with U.S. avionics, engines and interiors. Although Russian planes are known for their ruggedness, they're not particularly big on passenger amenities.

``That's something we add to it,'' said Cartwright, a well-connected Newport News businessman who for 15 years has bought and sold corporate planes.

Best known for Cold War artifacts like the M-4 ``Bison'' bomber, Myasishchev (pronounced mya-SEE-shef) also has produced high-altitude reconnaissance planes and the Buran, a Soviet-era imitation of the space shuttle.

Since 1991, Russia's military plane manufacturers have tried to reap the peace dividend - and stay in business - by converting their output to civilian aircraft.

But, along with the rest of the country, they've fallen on hard times as taxes, a fragile banking system and deep-rooted corruption have taken a toll on the economy. Russian interest rates average around 20 percent, down from about 100 percent a few years ago.

Feeling the crunch, Myasishchev slashed its work force from 27,000 to about 5,000.

``The times are changing,'' Valery Novikov, general designer for Myasishchev and co-chairman of General Aircraft, said through an interpreter. ``We're now working on space programs and civil planes.''

If all goes according to plan, the joint venture will eventually mean 700 or more jobs, with about 40 percent of them in Hampton Roads and 60 percent in Russia.

General Aircraft is leasing hangar space from the airport, but the firm will move to the airport's planned 100-acre aviation research park when it is built.

``It will utilize some of the manpower in the Tidewater area, drawing from the Air Force and Navy both,'' said Cartwright.

Cartwright said the company is poised to employ at least a few of the thousands of workers forced from their jobs at the Naval Aviation Depot maintenance facility in Norfolk, which fell victim last year to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission.

General Aircraft management says the area's rich aviation resources - NASA's Langley Research Center, Langley Air Force Base, Oceana Naval Air Station and a wealth of flight-oriented contractors - make the area an obvious choice for the business in terms of both for its recruiting prospects and the availability of technical expertise.

The question remains whether customers will buy General Aircraft's planes given, as Aviation Week & Space Technology phrased it, ``Russian aviation's well-known safety problems.''

Cartwright noted, somewhat delicately, that in addition to Myasishchev's hardware, the company will have a separate tool and die assembly in Newport News ``just in case.'' Among other things, it will mean that U.S. customers needing a part won't have to wait for it to arrive from Russia.

Putting U.S. engines, cockpits and electronics on the planes will not only make the planes more efficient to maintain and operate, but the practice should also pacify Federal Aviation Administration regulators, who must certify the craft airworthy.

The U.S.-Russian effort will be a big gamble, given the pivotal state of the general aviation industry, a category that includes aircraft ranging from two-seat trainers to 19-seat business jets. Between 1978 and 1994, unit sales dove from nearly 18,000 planes shipped per year to 928. The numbers have nosed up recently, a phenomenon that many in the industry attribute to the General Aviation Revitalization Act, which put a statute of limitations on plane manufacturers' vulnerability to lawsuits.

The outlook, at least in the short run, is good, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association.

General Aircraft's proposed planes include an entry-level, seven-seat bush plane; a pressurized, single-engine, seven-seat turboprop; a 10-seat, twin-engine turboprop; and an 8- to 19-seat ``pusher'' turboprop with two tail-mounted engines. They will range in price from $245,000 to $4 million, competitive with many used models on the U.S. market.

Risky as the venture may be, Cartwright has friends in high places nodding favorably upon the arrangement, among them the U.S. Commerce Department, several private investors and the U.S.-Russian Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission.

General Aircraft is still talking with state and federal agencies about incentive money, the axle grease of economic development. Cartwright declined to put a price tag on the venture.

``It's critically important to our efforts to diversify the (local) economy,'' said Newport News Mayor Joe Frank of the partnership.

If anybody can pull it off, said Frank, it's Cartwright.

``I know he has the abilities, contacts, skills and vision to make a project of this magnitude happen.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot

E. Vernon Cartwright, General Aircraft CEO, tells a news conference

Monday about the civilian aircraft his firm's joint venture will

produce, among them a seven-seat bush plane like the model in the

foreground.