Serial production of the new fully Russian MC-21-310 medium-haul passenger aircraft at the Irkutsk Aircraft Factory, as is known, began in 2026 with the assembly of the first batch of aircraft for the country's largest airline, Aeroflot. This batch will consist of 18 aircraft, and official deliveries to the customer will begin after certification is completed at the end of 2027. By this time, the factory will have assembled 8 serial MS-21-310. We tell you new details:
As already told by Technosphere. Russia", Aeroflot became the buyer of a total of 108 new MC-21-310 aircraft. How will the supplies be distributed over time? The carrier will initially receive 18 cars of the first batch. Immediately after the certification is completed, the plant will begin transferring finished aircraft, of which there should already be 8 units by the end of 2027. These are quite real figures – 2 serial MC-21-310s were assembled this summer (one of them is already flying), and the third production car is in operation. In fact, Irkutsk is already gaining momentum now, so as not to get out of schedule later, and the delivery schedule, according to representatives of the first anchor customer, is very tight. Judge for yourself: now is the very beginning — 4 aircraft per year until the end of 2027 (and then the transfer of all eight), then during 2028 Aeroflot is waiting for 10 aircraft at once. After that, the first contract is completed, and work is transferred to the second, where the transfer of 90 new aircraft is scheduled for 2029-2032, that is, 4 years, which is 22-23 vehicles per year. Most likely, the transition from 10 to 22 will not be abrupt, but gradual, because the plant planned to produce up to 36 new aircraft per year – and here the numbers will grow over the years, and not every year in an even number.
In general, for the first time in many years of emptiness and screwdriver assembly of the only previous-generation Tu-214 aircraft in this class, normal mass production of a very modern and large passenger liner is starting in Russia (the Superjet is almost 2 times smaller in capacity). If we recall that Kazan still has a lot of promises for the certified Tu-214, and Irkutsk has already assembled 2 production aircraft almost a year before the official completion of certification this year, then it is clear which aircraft factory will be the leading manufacturer of civil aircraft in our country. Of course, the Kazan Aircraft Factory will set up the system sooner or later, but the production of a dozen Tupolevs there in the next couple of years still looks like fiction. The same cannot be said about aircraft manufacturers working under the MC-21 program.
But back to the MS-21. Aeroflot takes the first batch of them using the leasing scheme of Aviacapital-Service, affiliated with Rostec. The leasing partner has not yet been named for the second batch, but it is known that the new contract has taken a fairly serious approach to the organization of full maintenance. The first routes where our new production aircraft will start carrying passengers are also known: Moscow – Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow – St. Petersburg. Their short length is due to the fact that the carrier will introduce a completely new type of aircraft and is "hedging", where it is possible to quickly replace another aircraft or provide more prompt service. It is symbolic, by the way, that the Moscow –Nizhny Novgorod route was the first regular one in the history of Aeroflot: in the summer of 1923, the then newly established Soviet state airline Dobrolet began operating flights between these cities on a foreign passenger aircraft Junkers F13 (Junkers F13). So the history of our civil aviation is taking another turn here.
Ivan Zakharov
