MOSCOW, December 16. /TASS/. Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) will spend over 10 billion rubles ($150.5 million at the current exchange rate) to build the first experimental Il-96-400M long-range passenger jet, according to a tender posted on the government’s official database.

Manufacturing the plane itself will cost 7.6 billion rubles and should be completed by December 2019. The rest will be spent on preparing detailed engineering drawings of the plane’s avionics and other systems.

The prototype is expected to begin preliminary trials between November 2019 and January 2020. Additional certification tests are due between November 2019 and May 2020.

According to a source in the Voronezh Aviation Plant, first elements of the new aircraft are already being assembled.

The Il-96-400M is a long-range wide-body passenger jet on the basis of the Il-96-300 aircraft. Its planned seating capacity is up to 400 passengers. The aircraft’s serial production is expected to begin in 2020. The new plane will get a new cabin, a longer fuselage and will be equipped with more powerful PS-90A1 engines.

This year, Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation invested 4.5 billion rubles to modernize the Voronezh Aviation Plant’s production lines to produce Il-96-400M.