New Baby for Russian Aviation Industry

After nearly ten years of effort, Russia’s biggest and best known war plane manufacturer, Sukhoi, has revealed its first passenger jet since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Superjet 100, which seats between 78 and 98 passengers, is set to replace Russia’s ageing Soviet-made fleet which is comprised of Tupolev Tu-134 and Yakovlev Yak-42 planes and take over all domestic routes, which they hope will ease the pressure on oil and gas exports while also boosting the Russian aviation industry with a newer, more efficient model of aircraft.

The new airliner was unveiled at a ceremony in Russia’s Far East, where part of Sukhoi’s Komsomolsk plant has been converted and suitably modified to produce civilian planes instead of fighter jets. The plant has a production target of 5-6 airliners per month over the next two years.

Russia aims to obtain at least 10 percent of the airliner market with the new passenger jets, which would place them number three in the world among aircraft producing countries. Sukhoi has also drawn up export targets with an Italian partner by the name of Alenia Aeronautica.

Having already pre-sold 73 planes, largely to Russian airlines, Sukhoi aims to raise this figure to 100 with a value of $2.8 billion by the end of the year.

They aim to sell 1,000 planes in total with roughly 700 of them going to global export markets. They also hope to obtain U.S and European certification at some point during the next year, which would put them in direct competition with both Embraer of Brazil and Canada’s Bombardier which up until now, have dominated the market for 70-100 seat aircraft.

Sukhoi says we can expect the maiden flight before the end of the year with a 10-15 percent lower operating cost than either Bombardier or Embraer.