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Senior official says MC-21 and SSJ-100 will be upgraded

The new Russian passenger plane MC-21 conducted its maiden flight on May 28, 2017

© Vasily Doyenin/TASS

ZHUKOVSKY, July 18. /TASS/. There are plans to upgrade the MC-21 and SSJ-100 aircraft, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said at the MAKS-2017 International Aviation and Space Salon.

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New MC-21 jet: Russia’s first step on aircraft market

"The MC-21 has started flying today and the SSJ-100 is operating, and we are already thinking of new modifications for the SSJ-100 and MC-21. We are most interested in the MC-21-400, this is [a plane] for 240 passengers. We are in for a big, serious and tough fight," he said.

The new Russian passenger plane MC-21 ("Mainline aircraft of the 21st century") conducted its maiden flight on May 28, 2017. Plans are in store to produce two of the plane’s versions: the MC-21-200, which will carry 132 to 165 passengers, and the MC-21-300, which will carry 163 to 211 passengers. It was previously reported that the Irkut aircraft manufacturer had 285 orders for the MC-21 aircraft. Of this number, final contracts were inked for the delivery of 175 aircraft.

The SSJ-100 is the first civil aircraft designed in Russia. This is a regional jet, the basic version of which has a flight range of 4,400 km and can carry 98 passengers. Its production started in 2011. A total of 122 SSJ-100s were produced by early April, according to the Aviation Transport Observer journal: 65 jets are with Russian operators (including 30 jets operated by Aeroflot), 30 jets are operating abroad, 19 are being stored or prepared to be delivered to operators, seven are in the Sukhoi Civil Aircraft company for testing, and one crashed in Indonesia in 2012.

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