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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
