Airline customers will receive six MC-21 jetliners in 2021, twelve in 2022, and 25 in 2023, advisor to United Aircraft Corporation president Yuri Slyusar and former head of Aeroflot Valery Okulov said Tuesday at a roundtable in the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament. Okulov further said that the manufacturing site in Irkutsk would work to capacity, making 72 airframes annually, starting in 2025. He also outlined plans for Sukhoi SSJ100 fleet growth, from 155 in 2019 to 185 next year and 215 in 2021.

In a separate development, UAC gave the catalog price for an MC-21-300 in factory standard configuration at $97.9 million. Earlier, the manufacturer hesitated to release the figure to the media for various reasons, including its lack of readiness for shipment. It had to make the figure public following a misinterpretation of the Kremlin’s recent statement about its readiness to provide $9 billion in support of leasing operations with the type. As UAC has explained, the latter figure covers only a part of the 175 MC-21-300s on order so far, namely those that will be placed with Russian airlines on lease terms. According to catalog prices, the value of the backlog of 175 aircraft totals $17.1 billion, according to the manufacturer.

Meanwhile, UAC has yet to decide how many deliverable MC-21 will come with indigenous PD-14 turbofans. Earlier, the manufacturer reserved the matter for airlines, offering them a choice between the indigenous power plant and the U.S.-supplied Pratt & Whitney PW1400G. More recently, however, in view of the tightening U.S. sanctions regime on the Russian military-industrial complex, the Kremlin has asked UAC to reconsider its approach, with more focus on indigenization. Effectively, that means the Kremlin will encourage the airlines and financial institutions ready to structure funding for the MC-21 acquisitions to favor the PD-14 option over the PW1400G, so as to reduce political risks and potential exposure to U.S. export restriction measures.