Russia And China Plan to Give Boeing And Airbus a Run for Their Money

Russia and China are working on a competitor with American and European wide-body aircraft. The new jointly-produced plane should be flying in 7 years' time. This, according to Yuri Slyusar, President of the United Aircraft Corporation. What the Russian and Chinese sides will be bringing to the table, as well as some information as to the model's technical characteristics, will all be revealed by our correspondent Alisa Romanova. This is the official launch of the project. With the opening of the Joint Venture's headquarters here in Shanghai, Russia and China can begin manufacturing their own wide-body long-range jet airliner. Quite soon, plans will be drawn up, and the search for equipment suppliers will begin. A joint company will be running the entire project: development, construction, sales and maintenance. The jet doesn't have a name yet, just a working title: CR China-Russia 929. But this is how it will probably look. This model was assembled last fall, during the Zhuhai airshow. There are 280 seats, a flight range of 12,000 km, and everything arranged on a parity basis. The engineering center is in Moscow, the headquarters and assembly are in Shanghai, because it is closer to the market. From the entire volume of almost 7,000 airplanes, that will be in demand in this segment in the next few years, about 15% comes from the Chinese market, and about 28% from the Asia-Pacific region. Of course, it's the most dynamic and fastest growing global market, And we won't just manufacture airplanes here, final assembly will be performed here, and we will be providing maintenance and a training center here. Russian engineers will develop the wing, the center wing section, one of the hardest details, and the main chassis. The Chinese will develop the fuselage, fairings, and the front chassis. The engines will be western, either from Rolls Royce or GE. But perhaps in the future, the jet will be equipped with a Russian-made PD-35 engine. Maybe Russian engineers are more competent in systems integration, since, with the Superjet, we went through the entire process of international airplane certification. The experience we received will be useful for the program. Moscow and Peking have similar experience in civil aviation. The C-919, the first Chinese narrow-body airliner, just completed its first flight. And the Russian medium-range MS-21 is about to take off as well. Your UAC and our Aircraft Corporation have similar histories these past 10 years. Apart from the MS-21, there are already 100 Superjets in the air. So we're going in the same direction to develop a joint competitive product. Russia and China have agreed to give preference to their national air carriers, while developing the airliner. No changes to the schedule have been made as of yet. According to the agreed upon plan, the first plane will take off in 2025, and in 2027, 10 years from now, the planes will enter commercial use.