MOSCOW, August 13. /TASS/. The first import-substituted MC-21-310 aircraft produced in Russia has completed a flight from Irkutsk to Zhukovsky, the press service of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC, a subsidiary of the Rostec State Corporation) reported.

"The first unit of the import-substituted MC-21-310 aircraft completed a flight from the airfield of Yakovlev's Irkutsk Aviation Plant (part of UAC under the Rostec State Corporation) to the Gromov Flight Research Institute's airfield," the statement reads.

The aircraft was piloted by a crew consisting of test pilots and Heroes of Russia Roman Taskaev and Oleg Kononenko, alongside lead flight test engineer and onboard operator Alexander Popov. The flight lasted 5 hours and 50 minutes, cruising at an altitude of up to 12,100 meters and speeds of up to 850 km/h.

Rostec specified that the aircraft covered more than 4,000 kilometers nonstop. In Zhukovsky, UAC specialists will inspect all systems following the long-haul flight and prepare the airliner for painting in the customer's design scheme. The flight reportedly proceeded routinely, with all systems operating as expected.

"The long-distance flight of the production-line MC-21 aircraft has once again demonstrated the reliability of the underlying design solutions and the domestic components and systems integrated into the machine. Certification flights for this aircraft type are currently underway. Through extensive cooperation among our enterprises, production chains have been established to launch serial manufacturing of the airliners. The Irkutsk Aviation Plant is ready to begin fulfilling new orders for the MC-21," the state corporation noted.

The MC-21 is a domestically developed short-to-medium-range passenger airliner designed to replace the Tu-154 and the Tu-204 family on the Russian market. It is also intended to serve as an alternative to foreign-made aircraft.