Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with&nbsp;New Jersey Monthly&nbsp;magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.

Senior Editor

Gregory Polek

A grand unveiling of the Irkut MC-21-300 on June 8 established a relatively firm project timeline for the 160- to 212-seat narrowbody, and marked a measure of vindication for what many in the West have disparaged as a fringe project. In attendance at the ceremony, Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev spoke of the prestige the program has brought to the country, as well as its importance to helping move its economy forward. He also congratulated Irkut’s employees for their role in shaping the future of Russia’s return to prominence in commercial aircraft manufacturing.

 


Expecting the MC-21 to gain Russian certification in 2018, United Aircraft subsidiary Irkut had hoped to fly the first airplane by the end of this year. However, during the rollout ceremony Medvedev referenced plans for first flight “within a year,” and UAC officials acknowledged that a previously quoted target might prove optimistic unless all goes exactly to plan. Rather, that milestone appears most likely to happen in or around February 2017, according to a UAC spokesman.

 


Speaking with reporters in the Eastern Siberian capital Irkutsk, Irkut vice president of marketing Kirill Budaev referenced the potential to replace some of the Western partners on the program in the future, but he conceded the need for Russian companies to develop to Western standards before the OEM would consider any such move. “We are trying to keep a balance,” he said. “For sure we have an interest in both [Western and Russian suppliers]. We need to satisfy international airlines and they need international suppliers for sure. And we need to satisfy the Russian aviation industry because we need to force them to develop. We expect that, sooner or later, local Russian manufacturers will be at least at the same level as international ones.”

 


Irkut will also need the help of international suppliers to provide customer support networks, added Budaev. In fact, Irkut has already signed a memorandum of understanding with Lufthansa Technik for MRO support. “They have quite a wide network,” Budaev said of the German company. “We can rely on such a big player and then if airlines say we want something more focused, we used to work with other MRO providers. We can authorize them; we do not have to build our own infrastructure…sales goes first, and then the customer service follows. It makes no sense to create something special, for example, in Australia, if sales will not be there.”

 


Perhaps the program’s most prominent Western supplier, Pratt &amp; Whitney, has now shipped three PW1400G geared turbofans out of an order for 100 engines, a pair of which will power the MC-21 on its first flight. An alternative powerplant—in the form of the domestically designed PD-14 turbofan—began flight tests on an Ilyushin Il-76 test bed earlier this year.

 


Apart from the new engine choices, either of which Irkut claims will produce a 15-percent operating cost advantage over the current Airbus A320, the MC-21’s most radical advance centers on its carbon fiber wings, which take the airplane’s composite content to 30 percent. AeroComposit in Ulyanovsk, Russia, builds the wings using an out-of-autoclave resin transfer infusion process never before tried on a commercial aircraft. Both Airbus and Boeing use a more expensive process that requires an autoclave to cure their composite wings on the A350 and 787, respectively. Both of the MC-21’s chief competitors—the Boeing 737 Max and Airbus A320–use metal wings.

 


Still, UAC president Yury Slyusar acknowledged the difficulty the MC-21 will encounter competing against the Western duopoly, whose well-established support networks and long history of sales to airlines around the world Irkut can only hope to one day match. “We do understand that it will not be easy,” he said. “But we are sure that the MC-21 is really nowadays the most competitive aircraft in its class. And that’s why we believe this aircraft will meet the demands of passengers, airlines and so on—due to its innovation, such as engines, such as avionics, such as composite wings.”

 


While UAC’s definitive plans call for that innovation to extend to the smaller, 150-seat MC-21-200, Slyusar suggested the company has seriously revisited prospects for a larger version airplane in the form of the MC-21-400. “I think that this project will be discussed during 2017, not earlier,” confirmed Slyusar, who also acknowledged the potential for further competition from Boeing in the sector the MC-21-400 would occupy, or the so called “Middle of the Market (MOM).”

 


“We should take into consideration the plans of our colleagues; that’s why we [plan to] make a decision rationally,” he said.

 


Addressing production capacity, Slyusar said Irkut could build as many as 72 aircraft a year in its newly refurbished and modernized final assembly hall in Irkustk. While the company’s need–or ability–to deliver six airplanes per month won’t likely materialize for several years, Budaev said the production plan satisfies the company’s projected demand for 1,060 MC-21s over the next two decades. Slyusar, meanwhile, expressed satisfaction with the early level of commercial interest in the product: so far the MC-21 has drawn firm orders for nearly 200 airplanes, including 50 from launch customer Aeroflot.

 


Immediately following the rollout ceremony, the program received a new commercial boost in the form of letter of intent from Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) covering the lease of 10 MC-21-300s through Ilyushin Finance. The signing ceremony marked only the third such deal from a foreign airline for the model. Holding a firm order for six MC-21-300s, Egypt’s Cairo Aviation stands as the only confirmed non-Russian customer for the airplane. Malaysia’s Crecom Burj Resources placed a tentative order for 50 airplanes at Farnborough 2010 that has yet to become firm.

 


As for the heavy imbalance toward Russian customers, Budaev called the phenomenon “normal” and pointed to the program’s international supplier base as proof of its global stature. “Sometimes we call the MC-21 an international plane with Russian brains,” he quipped. Budaev added that program leaders see “big potential” in Latin America, Africa and in Asia, particularly for the MC-21-300, whose seating capacity falls between the A320 and A321–exactly where UAC’s market studies show the greatest demand.

 


Featuring the widest fuselage of any narrowbody on the market, the MC-21 offers both cabin comfort for full-service airlines and cost advantages for low-fare carriers, according to UAC and Irkut. The MC-21’s list price of $91 million suggests a 15-percent lower acquisition cost than that of the current A320.

 


“For sure we are looking at Europe as well, because airlines there need to find unusual or ambitious solutions to survive because of the strong presence of low-fare airlines,” said Budaev. Last year’s order for Sukhoi Superjets from Ireland’s CityJet “is a very good sign” for the MC-21 program, he concluded.

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