Summary
- The primary deliveries of MC-21 have been postponed to 2025 or 2026.
- Sanctions, imposed on Russia’s aerospace sector after the start of the war in Ukraine, have impacted the event of the MC-21.
- The country is seeking to develop its aerospace sector to interchange Airbus and Boeing jets out there.
Rostec, the bulk shareholder of United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), the corporate whose subsidiary Yakovlev is designing the MC-21, has shed some light today on the outlook for the brand new narrowbody. Russia’s domestic competitor to the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX is facing yet more delays, with first deliveries now postponed to 2025 or 2026.
Incomplete tests
Sergei Chemezov, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Rostec, which owns nearly all of shares in UAC, told journalists that the manufacturer wouldn’t deliver a single MC-21 in 2024. The announcement was made during a press conference following the annual state-of-the-nation address by Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, in keeping with a report by Interfax.
Chemezov added that the aircraft must be tested thoroughly and as soon as UAC completes them. he added, without specifying what sort of tests are still incomplete.
Photo: fastailwind | Shutterstock
Nevertheless, the chief reiterated that the primary deliveries should are available in 2025, although there remains to be a risk things could slip into 2026. Aeroflot is the launch customer of the sort, and due to this fact should receive the primary deliveries. In keeping with ch-aviation data, five airlines have ordered 291 MC-21 aircraft, while 99 aircraft don’t have any operators assigned as yet.
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Sanctions impacting the event of MC-21
Before Russia unlawfully invaded Ukraine and began a war that had been occurring for greater than two years, the MC-21 was being developed with foreign components, including the engines and the wings. The Federal Air Transport Agency of Russia (FATA) initially certified the MC-21 in January 2022, a month before the war in Ukraine.
On the time, Yakovlev, the corporate designing the aircraft, boasted that the MC-21 was the first-ever medium-range aircraft to have a composite wing, with about 40% of its components being comprised of composite materials. Moreover, since 2021, the corporate has only used domestically made materials to supply the aircraft wing, with the primary Russian-made wing installed in July 2021. The primary MC-21 began flights with the locally built wings in December of the identical yr.
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Photo: fifg | Shutterstock
Still, the aircraft was presupposed to be powered by the Pratt & Whitney PW1400G engines, one among the engine variants of the Geared Turbofan (GTF) family, which incorporates the PW1100G (Airbus A320neo family aircraft), PW1500G (A220), and PW1700G (Embraer E2 aircraft family).
Yet within the weeks after the invasion, the US, European Union (EU), and other Western states have increasingly sanctioned the country, including its aerospace industry. This has essentially cut it off from any supply of Western components for its industrial aircraft.
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Developing Russian components
While Yakovlev has in a roundabout way addressed the sanctions in any of its statements released shortly after the war, the corporate’s announcement from September 2022 quoted Chemezov as saying that the domestic aircraft industry has to produce airlines with comfortable, modern, and domestically produced aircraft to interchange Airbus and Boeing jets.
Then, Yakovlev outlined that, by 2030, Russian airlines should take delivery of over 500 domestically made aircraft, including 140 SSJ-NEW, 270 MS-21, and 70 Tu-214 aircraft. Redwings operated its first international flights with the latter in early February 2024.
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