MAKS air show will be postponed to 2024

The International Aviation and Space Salon (MAKS) was postponed to 2024 60 days before the opening. Instead of July 2023, it will be held in the summer of 2024, a source close to the organizers of the salon and an interlocutor at one of the defense industry enterprises told Vedomosti. The final decision, according to the first interlocutor, will be made on May 25 at a meeting in the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The organizers of the air show are the Ministry of Industry and Trade and Rostec. The state corporation did not respond to Vedomosti’s request. A spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Trade declined to comment.

MAKS takes place every two years in Zhukovsky near Moscow at the airfield of the Gromov Flight Research Institute. The salon is positioned as the main international exhibition platform, where the latest Russian and foreign aircraft are shown. MAKS is one of the ten largest world air shows along with Le Bourget (France), Farnborough (Great Britain) and Singapore.

According to a Vedomosti source close to the government, there are several factors in favor of postponing MAKS. In the context of sanctions against the Russian aviation industry, the participation of foreign companies in the air show will be limited, he notes. And the import substitution projects that have been started have not yet been completed, it is better to focus on work, the source says.

Also, according to him, there are security issues, although this is not the main reason for the postponement of the air show.

MAKS is not only an aviation festival for a mass audience, but first of all a significant business event that gives new market players the opportunity to declare themselves and their developments, hold meetings and negotiations with industry colleagues and customers, says the editor of the Unmanned Aviation portal » Denis Fedutinov. He recalls that the well-known developers of Russian unmanned systems Eleron-3SV, Orlan-10 and loitering munitions Lancet made their debut at this site.

“The holding of such events is now generally out of place,” says Ivan Konovalov, development director of the Fund for Assistance to Technologies of the 21st Century. It’s about security, and that the industry should not be distracted from the implementation of the current tense plans, he said.

Information about the cancellation of other similar events has not been received at the moment, says the source of Vedomosti at one of the enterprises of the defense industry. We are talking about the “Naval Salon – 2023”, which is expected in June in St. Petersburg, and the exhibition “Army-2023” in the Moscow region in August (held under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense).