TOLUCA (Mexico), September 26. /ITAR-TASS/. Director-General of Mexican airline Interjet Jose Luis Garza valued highly quality and reliability of airliners Sukhoi SuperJet-100 (SSJ-100). Local pilots and passengers voiced only positive opinions about the quality of an airliner of Russian-Italian production a batch of which the Mexican airliner had bought, Garza said in an exclusive interview with ITAR-TASS.

“We have a technical standard according to which it is determined whether the airliner is reliable or not,” Garza said, adding that this indicator of Sukhoi airliners in operation makes 99.1%

“This is a very high level particularly for a new airplane, as it entered the Mexican market for the first time,” he said. At the same time he noted that nine airliners which are already in Interjet’s operation are used very intensively, as they make an average 7.5 take-offs and landings a day.

“Such an intensive operation of an aircraft which is produced with the use of high-precision scientific achievements is considered very high,” Garza said, noting with confidence that such a high level of reliability is not noted for other brands of airplanes of the same class which are particularly produced in Brazil and Canada.

Mexican pilots “noted that this airliner is very easy to steer and is compared with Airbus-320, but at the same time they note best Sukhoi SuperJet-100 features,” Garza noted.

Passengers also give positive responses about the airplane, meanwhile, they do not take it as a regional airliner, as it is in fact. “Our clients point out a large cabin and the quality of comfort provided in it compared with that in airliners Boeings,” the Interjet general director.

Garza noted that Sukhoi SuperJet-100 showed itself perfectly in heavy weather conditions. The Mexican air company used this airliner without any problems for flights to Baja California Sur, north-western United States, which had recently been hit by hurricane Odile strongly. Jointly produced airplanes were used successfully as ‘an air bridge’ to evacuate tourists from resorts on this peninsula.

Interjet became the first company in Latin America that had bought 20 Sukhoi SuperJet-100 airliners. This company also has an option to buy ten more jets of Russian-Italian production.