The new Russian medium-range aircraft MC-21 in the first import-substituted modification will have a flight range of up to 3,800 km instead of the originally planned 5,100 km. This indicator is quite suitable for closing most routes in the European part of Russia, and in the future it will be increased through technical modernization, explained to "Perviy Technicheskiy" aviation expert, editor-in-chief of Avia.ru portal Roman Gusarov.
MC-21 is just beginning its journey, the range of 3800 km is a confirmed range. In fact, this is already very good. It doesn't even have wingtips, and if they are installed, they will further reduce fuel consumption by several percent.
Gusarov recalled that the medium-range segment is inland aircraft, they do not fly overseas.
The thing is that we proceed from our geography. But the MC-21 flies to Novosibirsk, which is 3800 km. And it shouldn't fly to Vladivostok. The MC-21 will perfectly cover the main part of the routes in Russia, and then it will begin to improve. The design has a double strength. I am sure that the "extra" few tons of the aircraft can be "stolen" somewhere later. Gradually we will reach these 5,000 km, as it happened earlier with Supergjet, the range of 3,8000 km is not the final figure.
The specialist recalled that the first batch of Superjet instead of the declared flight range of 3500 km turned out to have a flight resource of 2400 km. But then they worked on the aircraft, and after five years they brought the range up to 4000 km.
All aircraft have approximately the same story. Even the Boeing 737 started with 2500 km. It took decades to increase the range by optimizing dynamics, wing design, new flaps, and wingtips. As a result, they increased the range.
As a reminder, at the end of October, the second prototype MC-21-310 in import-substituted version took to the sky, but without replacing five important systems. Employees of the Irkutsk Aviation Plant worked around the clock to get the second test aircraft into the sky as soon as possible.
Earlier www1.ru reported that the manufacturer of Be-200 amphibians with PD-8 will hide reporting against the background of huge losses.
