Ilyushin Il-96-400

The Il-96-400 is Ilyushin's answer to the commercial failure of the Il-96M: the same stretched fuselage and the same two-pilot cockpit, but with Russian engines and avionics. When American financing for the Pratt & Whitney engines and Rockwell Collins equipment was blocked in the late 1990s, the design bureau refocused the project on Perm's PS-90A1 turbofan, a development of the Il-96-300's PS-90A with 17,400 kgf of thrust, more than the American engines it replaced, and on an improved domestic avionics suite. The Russian Wikipedia describes it as a "deep modernisation" of the Il-96-300 obtained from the Il-96M, whose fuselage it inherits.

The first concrete step came between 1999 and 2000 with the Il-96-400T freighter project, which transferred the capabilities of the Il-96T to a Russian powerplant and equipment, and the Il-96MO prototype itself was displayed at the MAKS 2003 show already under the Il-96-400 designation. Since then the name Il-96-400 has covered both the catalogue passenger version and the common basis of a whole family of military, cargo and new-generation derivatives.

The Il-96-400 is 63.93 m long, against 55.35 m for the Il-96-300, and retains the 60.12 m wingspan, 350 m² wing area, 17.55 m height and 6.08 m fuselage cross-section common to the whole family. Capacity is 436 passengers in a single class, 386 in two classes and 315 in three; the Spanish Wikipedia quotes 435 seats in one class, 332-340 in two and 247 in a three-class layout with a range of 11,300 km. The lower holds offer 196 m³ and 32 LD3 containers. The technical crew is two pilots, with provision for a third crew member.

The four PS-90A1s, at 170.7 kN each, are similar in design to the Il-96-300's twin-spool PS-90A apart from their higher thrust, and the aircraft keeps the same VSU-10-02 auxiliary power unit. Ilyushin did not rule out offering Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce or CFM engines if customers asked for them. According to the manufacturer's data, operating empty weight is 122.3 tonnes and maximum take-off weight 265 tonnes (the Russian Wikipedia quotes 270), maximum payload 58 tonnes and fuel capacity 152,620 litres. Range with 315 passengers is 10,000 km (the Russian Wikipedia speaks of a maximum of 13,000 km), the take-off run at maximum weight 2,700 m, and cruise Mach 0.78-0.84, 850-870 km/h, with a 13,100 m ceiling.

The passenger version of the Il-96-400 was never built in series for airlines. The only new-build examples of the -400 branch to leave the VASO plant in Voronezh were Il-96-400T freighters: three, according to the Russian Wikipedia's tally at 29 December 2024, which puts total Il-96 family production at 37 aircraft (33 Il-96-300s, 3 Il-96-400Ts and 1 Il-96-400M). As of 1 January 2017 VASO had five Il-96s in assembly, three of them -400Ts, and the United Aircraft Corporation planned a rate of two or three aircraft a year through 2023-2025.

As for passenger orders, in March 2010 The Wall Street Journal reported that a special version, the Il-96-400VT, was bidding for the US Air Force tanker programme, worth US$40 billion; and in February 2013 Cubana signed a deal for three 350-seat Il-96-400s, which has not materialised. The English Wikipedia lists two Il-96-400s with the Russian Ministry of Defence, and Aviation21 counted two Il-96-400s in the Rossiya special flight detachment as of 1 January 2017, among them RA-96102, assigned to the Minister of Defence; according to the Russian Wikipedia, that aircraft is an Il-96-400T airframe named "Valery Menitsky".

Several derivatives have been developed on the Il-96-400 basis. The Il-96-400T is the freighter, with a 776 m³ hold and 92 tonnes of payload, operated by Polet between 2009 and 2013 and revived in December 2023 by Sky Gates. The Il-96-400VPU is the airborne command post for the FSB: the fourth -400T built for Polet, RA-96104, flown but never delivered because of the airline's financial problems, was converted from 2014 with windows, additional exits and an integral airstair in the lower fuselage in the style of the Il-86, under Project Zveno-3S, which calls for two aircraft to replace the Il-80s. The Il-96-400TZ was a strategic tanker ordered by the Ministry of Defence in January 2015, able to transfer more than 65 tonnes of fuel at a distance of 3.5 thousand km from its base using UPAZ-1 pods, whose contract was cancelled in 2018 in favour of the Il-78M-90A. And the Il-96-400M, contracted in February 2017 with a fuselage 9.65 m longer than the -300 and 390 seats, was rolled out on 7 June 2023 and made its first flight on 1 November 2023, still on PS-90 engines.

The Il-96-400 has never been an airliner in the strict sense, but it is the platform that has kept wide-body production alive in Russia. Through its freighters, its state aircraft and the Il-96-400M, the fuselage Ilyushin designed for the Il-96M with American engines has ended up, with Russian engines, as one of the very few wide-body aircraft built outside the Airbus-Boeing duopoly.