When shall we see the first Sukhoi Superjet 100 being flown by commercial airlines?
Today the Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft, powered by 2 SaM146 engines, has scored over 40 hours in-flight. We are planning to obtain type certification in mid 2009, while the first deliveries are scheduled for the 3rd quarter of 2009. After such hard work, when looking back, what was the most difficult obstacle your team and yourself had to overcome? To build up a completely new business infrastructure in parallel with the product that was the most challenging task. Having almost a dozen different countries on our team, first we had to merge different cultures to make this team work. Effective supplier management, cost-driven engineering, airplane marketing and sales, customer engineering and support, investor relations this is a long list of new activities we had to master. I would say, we had to reshape the traditional perception of commercial aircraft-making in Russia. Actually we explained to people that the SSJ100 program is to become a well-tuned business in order not to become ano
