Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Co, the commercial unit of Russian military plane maker Sukhoi Co, is chipping away at a Canadian-Brazilian duopoly for regional jets after scoring a milestone certification for its SuperJet model.
The engine for the SuperJet, Russia’s first major passenger airplane project since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was certified yesterday by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Russia’s Avia Register is set to follow “within a few weeks”, said PowerJet, the company selling the engine. Certification includes tests for safety, noise and emissions.
The approval brings the SuperJet, which can carry 75 to 95 passengers, one step closer to challenging Brazil’s Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica SA and Canada’s Bombardier as the only builders of regional jets. Certification for the plane may follow later this year, with three prototypes already accumulating thousands of hours of test flights, EASA said.
“From what we know today, the plane can still get certification this year,” Norbert Lohl, certification director at EASA, said at a ceremony in Cologne yesterday.
Bombardier filed for certification of its CSeries jet that seats 100 to 149 passengers with EASA at the beginning of the year, and Embraer filed for a competing plane this year, Lohl said. The process typically takes about five years, he said. Bombardier targets entry into service for 2013. The SuperJet may include a stretch version with up to 118 seats.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan and a planemaker from China may also file for certifications for similar sized planes with EASA in the foreseeable future, Lohl said.
