RuAviation

On April 23rd, in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the third prototype of the Superjet 100 aircraft (s/n 97003, a/c number 97023) completed its maiden flight and joined the flight test programme. This is a fully indigenised aircraft under the SSJ New programme, which began in 2019. Alexander Dolotovsky, Deputy Director General of PJSC Yakovlev and Director of the Superjet programme, stated in an interview with UAC (United Aircraft Corporation) press service that no imported systems remain in the SJ-100, and described the advantages of the Superjet when compared to its counterparts.

According to him, the indigenisation programme affected all systems and components of the aircraft, including those previously not considered critical, such as the cockpit glazing supplied by NPO Romashin and the passenger cabin windows manufactured in Samara. The aircraft now features a completely domestically produced interior: from small plastic parts to seats and passenger cabin equipment.

Over the past eighteen months, a significant amount of ground testing has been carried out on both the prototype and on aircraft 97001, which commenced its certification test programme in 2023. Particular attention was paid to the PD-8 power plant. Together with UEC-Saturn, extensive ground and flight tests were conducted in short order using a flying test bed.

The Director of the Superjet programme particularly emphasised the timeline – less than six years – that the developers adhered to. “A thorough modernisation of an aircraft, affecting all its systems, not only the essential ones, is equivalent in its scope to a complete aircraft development programme. And a complete aircraft development programme, under the best of circumstances, takes, according to statistics from the last 30-40 years, on average from 8 to 12 years,” said Alexander Dolotovsky.

He cited the Bombardier CSeries programme as an example – an aircraft close in size to the Superjet, with a capacity of between 120 and 140 seats. “The level of technical innovation in that aircraft is comparable to the Superjet. However, the Gate-3 stage, which corresponds to our system for protecting the preliminary design, was passed by our colleagues even earlier than the Superjet. But the first serial delivery of the Bombardier did not take place until 2016. I remind you of the first Superjet. The preliminary design for it was defended in 2004, and the first serial delivery was in 2011. That is, we managed to complete the first aircraft in approximately 6-7 years. Now we are achieving this in significantly shorter timescales; less than 6 years have passed, and the aircraft is already airborne,” he emphasised.

The SJ-100 retains the functionality and capabilities of its predecessor – the SSJ100 – but has received several improvements. The basic configuration includes winglets and enlarged landing gear doors, improving aerodynamic performance. In addition, a cockpit with wide-angle displays has been introduced, providing a better informational field.

There isn’t a single component in the SJ-100 that was used in previous versions of the aircraft. It is a completely new aircraft, Alexander Dolotovsky emphasised. “The aircraft features an indigenised electrical power system, flight control system, display systems, signalling systems, radio communication systems, radio navigation systems. Inertial systems, air data measurement systems, landing gear, landing gear brakes, the main propulsion unit, the auxiliary power unit, the fuel system, the crew oxygen system, and the passenger oxygen system have all been replaced,” he listed.

It was previously reported that 38 systems and components of the new aircraft have been replaced with domestic equivalents, leaving nothing imported.

The SJ-100 is the result of the work not only of the Yakovlev company but also of more than 60 first-tier cooperative enterprises and tens of thousands of specialists across the country. Thanks to their efforts, it was possible to solve problems that previously seemed impossible, emphasised the Deputy Director General of Yakovlev.

The SJ-100 is currently in the final stage of certification testing. They plan to complete these tests by the end of this year, in order to begin deliveries of the aircraft to customers as early as 2026.