The Year Of The Upstarts

If there is one segment that most carriers are interested in, it is the middle of the market, often abbreviated MoM, the airliner market between the narrowbody and the widebody aircraft. Over the last year, a number of aircraft manufacturers have put their best foot forward to get into the hallowed MoM segment.

On May 28, 2017, Russia carried out a test flight of the MC-21, a medium-range commercial passenger aircraft that's Russia's first since the collapse of the Soviet empire. The MC-21 will be Russia's attempt at regaining the ground the country lost to the West in aerospace engineering over the past three decades. No wonder, the plane is being hyped to take on Airbus and the Boeing airliners.

The fight then is on to take pole position in the middle of the market (MoM), what aviation pundits describe as the airliner market between the narrowbody and the widebody aircraft. While the Big Daddies —Boeing and Airbus – compete for that segment, 2017 saw the entrance of the Ikrut MC-21, a Russian twin-engine short-midrange jet airliner with a capacity of 150-211 passengers.

Speaking to the RIA Novosti news agency recently, an official from Irkut Corporation confirmed that “the first flying model MC-21 has moved from the final assembly shop to the flight testing division to prepare for the first flight.”

While there are very few details about the plane's expected flight testing schedule, the official who spoke to RIA Novosti was quoted saying that the date for the first flight was yet to be confirmed. Russia’s Izvestia newspaper quoted another official who explained that the aircraft would now need to pass a series of ground tests, including fueling, running its engines in different operating modes, testing all on-board systems, taxiing on the runway, speeding up to liftoff speed, and braking at speed. Only after all these would flight testing begin.