MC-21-300 makes first flight

MC-21 short-and medium-haul passenger plane made the first flight in Irkutsk, a source at the Irkutsk aviation plant (the Irkut Corporation) told TASS on Sunday.

“The plane was successful,” the source said, refusing from further comments.

Witnesses have posted a few recordings on YouTube. One of the videos shows the plane fly above the audience, which welcomed it with applauses.

More:

Bad Quality video of Landing:

Fly-By of the MC-21:

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Is it just me or does it look like the new Comac plane? It sounds a little noisy overhead, other than that it looks like a good competitor for the ERJ E2 family.

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The company actually wants to compete with the more famous A320 and the B737. It’s high risk high reward, many airlines would not want to buy the MC-21 because of the crew-retraining process. The only substantial reason why an airline would buy the MC-21 is because of an extra 500km range.

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Wow ok, so it does have a pretty good capacity. And good quality engines by the sounds.

Never even heard of the company. But I think the Comac will probably do better than this - I wonder how many orders are in for it?

Currently 192. Quite a bit for the first Russian commercial airliner in 20 years.

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That’s fairly decent

Yeah, I was about to say finally Russia is emerging back into the aviation market.

Eww it has a weird looking nose (almost like a 767 but droopier), old looking engines… and no winglets?


The rear of the fuselage looks much like that of an Airbus but with a 787 APU exhaust. The wings are far forward, too? At least the tail looks reasonable.

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It does seem weird that the MC-21 doesn’t have any winglets, especially when the first drafts included A350-looking like winglets:

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It shouldn’t be that loud, it uses PW-1400G.

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Looking good. I would buy it if I could. I like Russian planes, especially the MiG-29K

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To me it looks like a mini 767

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They are Pratt & Whittney PW1431G

That has been decided to keep the aircraft centre of gravity at it’s best position.

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Is double bogey an option on this plane? I thought they were trying to slot MC-21 into 757’s sweet spot with double bogey, but seat number is too low to be 757’s replacement. I wonder why they went away with winglet, did they change it to raked wingtip like Boeing 777, 748, and 787.

Doesn’t look like a raked wingtip

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Just watched the video of MC21 close up above and yeah there is no winglet nor raked wingtip. Russians are always behind on fuel saving technology, but they do have large reserve of fuel so it must be no concern to them.

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@Deaf A friend of mine was at the conference where the MC-21 was introduced. Both of your questions were brought up actually. The engineers said that there is no space to fit he double bogey on the plane, as the cargo hold is directly next to the landing gear compartment. They also said that this aircraft doesn’t have orders from countrys where runways are badly maintenced, hence no need for a double bogey.

For the winglet, the designers said that there were balancing issues and that even with a winglet option, the aircraft wouldn’t save much fuel, as it is not flying long haul.

Interesting perspective on winglet, Airbus and Boeing has winglet on 320 and 737 even through they are short haul planes.

If there is longer version planned, will there be a double bogey on it? Like triple bogey on 350-1000 when you have double bogey on -900.

I think the lack of winglets is slightly odd. Especially on a modern aircraft such as this.