MS-21 with import-substituted wing made its first flight – RBK

Experienced MC-21 with a wing without American components made its first flight

The MC-21 aircraft with a wing made of Russian composites made its first flight. In September 2022, the Aeroflot group will start receiving such airliners. The Ministry of Industry and Trade spent ₽4.4 billion on the development of an alternative to American composites

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An experimental MC-21-300 aircraft with a wing made of Russian composites and American PW1400G engines made its first test flight. This happened on Saturday, December 25, at the Irkutsk aircraft plant, the press service of Rostec told RBC.

“The first flight of an aircraft with a wing made of Russian composites proves that we did everything right, the MC-21 program is consistently and steadily moving forward, despite sanctions and unfair competition,” said the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov.

The total amount of funds allocated by the ministry for the creation of Russian materials for the composite wing amounted to 4.4 billion rubles. The minister called this state support “unprecedented in scale.”

The development and production of parts and assemblies of the MS-21 airframe from polymer composite materials is carried out by the Aerocomposite company (part of the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), a subsidiary of Rostec). Initially, for the MC-21 wing, Aerocomposite used materials from the American company Hexcel and the Japanese company Toray Industries. But in the fall of 2018, the US Department of Commerce put Aerocomposite on the sanctions list due to support for the activities of Russian companies from the military aerospace industry.