Sukhoi Civil Aircraft is looking towards the Asia-Pacific region to grow sales of its Russian Regional Jet (RRJ), due to make its first flight in September 2007.
Speaking at Asian Aerospace yesterday, RRJ regional sales director Anatoly Mezhevov said that Sukhoi regards the region as one of the most important targets for potential sales.
“With more than 500 million people living in 150 cities – many of them strong aviation hubs – we forecast that there are potential sales of approaching 850 regional jets in the 60- to 120-seat range within the next 20 years.”
Mezhevov is particularly targeting China and Indonesia, along with India and the Philippines.
He continues: “The ‘commonality concept’ of the RRJ creates major economic efficiencies, generating savings for airlines of between 10% and 15% when compared with the competition.
“Our customers – and potential customers – understand that this is genuinely an internal project…not purely Russian. We have state-of-the-art technology and electronics from Europe and the USA – as well as Russia – and the RRJ concept is already attracting the attention of potential customers, including European and US airlines.
“I am hopeful that we will be able to announce orders in the Asia-Pacific region by the end of this year and that we’ll see orders coming in from the USA too – but possibly not for delivery until 2009-11.”
To date, Sukhoi has orders for 134 RRJs, including firm orders, options and letters of intent. Mezhevov says that the company is talking to Scandinavian airline SAS about being listed as a finalist in its competition to supplement its regional fleet.
The RRJ’s engines – SaM146 powerplants, designed and built by PowerJet, a joint venture between Snecma and MPO Saturn – are already at the final assembly stage, with the Snecma-produced “hot”’ section of the engine due to be mated to the fan and low-pressure sections produced by MPO Saturn in Russia.
Due to be run for the first time in two months’ time, the engine is being produced with a thrust range of 14,000-17,500lb (62-78kN).
Speaking at Asian Aerospace yesterday, PowerJet chairman and chief executive Michel Déchelotte said that Sukhoi intends to offer airlines the option of rotating the engines between the RRJ-60 and its larger cousins, the RRJ-75 and RRJ-95, to even up servicing needs, depending on what thrust rating - and therefore exhaust gas temperature (EGT) - has been used.
He said: “Our engine is the only one on the market capable of being run at all the thrust ratings needed in the regional jet market, without any hardware changes at all. The SaM146 is also extremely environmentally friendly and we believe that it will have a 40% margin over all existing and planned emissions and noise legislation.”
- Sukhoi and Italian company Finmeccanica are rumoured to be within a month of signing a contract on technical and marketing cooperation, coinciding with Italian company Alenia taking a 25% stake in Sukhoi itself.
Source: Flight Daily News
