Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Company (SCAC) flew an SSJ100 Superjet outfitted with the extended "sabrelet" wing tips during the opening day of the MAKS 2019 airshow in Russia on August 27. The new version of the baseline design began its flight-test program on December 21, 2017, when the manufacturer flew number 97006 (formerly 95032). Later, a second airframe, 97012—the one featured at the 14th MAKS event—joined in. According to SCAC, sabrelets improve fuel efficiency by 3 to 4 percent.

SCAC has already completed the first deliverable aircraft, RA-89135. Last month, it was painted in the customer airline's colors, but delivery to Severstal is delayed until the respective supplementary certificate is granted by the national civil aviation authority Rosaviatsiya. This is expected shortly because the flight-test program is complete.

It is not yet clear how many new airplanes will be made with the sabrelets. Today, SCAC's main manufacturing site at Komsomolsk-upon-Amur makes most of the new airframes without the extended wingtips. Two Superjets on the MAKS 2019 static display, RA-89123 in Yakutia colors and RA-89035 in Aeroflot’s, are equipped with the earlier-standard wing.

Meanwhile, Russia has been working on decreasing foreign component content in the SSJ100. A new move in that direction is the development of the PD-8 engine as a direct replacement for the current SaM.146, which is produced by Powerjet, a joint venture between France’s Safran and Russia’s NPO Saturn, the latter now a member in United Engine Corporation (local acronym ODK). Under the original agreement when Powerjet was founded in 2005, Russia developed the SaM.146’s cold section, while the French company contributed the DEM.21 core.

The PD-8 will be made on the technological base of the larger PD-14, which was certified last October and slated for the Irkut MC-21 narrowbody. Perm-based Aviadvigatel, which designed the PD-14, once offered the PD-10 for an enlarged version of the SSJ-100, known as SSJ-NG and seating 130 passengers. Conceived with the same core, that project did not go forward. The design house also proposed the PD-7 as a scaled-down version of the PD-14, but it suffered the same fate as the PD-10. Instead, the Russian decision-makers seem to have opted for development of the PD-8, but this project would be carried out not by Aviadvigatel but NPO Saturn in Rybinsk, according to industry insiders who spoke to AIN.

Speaking to journalists on the eve of MAKS 2019, Oleg Bocharov, deputy head of Russia’s ministry with for industry and trade and responsible for the aviation industry, alleged that “French colleagues” sometimes “inflate prices,” targeting higher return on investment. If that practice continues, he threatened to create a completely Russian analog: the PD-8 that is depicted as a combination of a locally designed core (derived from the PD-14) with the existing cold section (developed earlier by NPO Saturn). Such an approach promises to cut lead time and development costs. Bocharov referred to the PD-8-powered airplane as the “SSJ neo.”