Aerospace firm Sukhoi said Thursday that it planned to sign a “firm contract” to sell 30 SuperJets to a customer from Southeast Asia next week.
The company said in a statement that the deal would be sealed at the Farnborough International Airshow, which starts July 19 and runs for a week.
“This will be our biggest foreign contract for planes that have a catalogue price of $31.7 million each,” Sukhoi spokeswoman Olga Kayukova said Thursday.
Sukhoi chief executive Mikhail Pogosyan said June 11 that the company will supply the first three of its SuperJet passenger airplanes this year as Russia seeks to challenge Airbus and Boeing in the mid-range market. The SuperJet is Russia’s first major passenger airplane project since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The contract is worth a total of $1 billion, said Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, adding that the deal may be agreed upon with a buyer from Vietnam, Indonesia or Malaysia.
The contract will “greatly reinforce the position of Sukhoi in the commercial aviation market, which is highly competitive for mid-range aircraft,” Makiyenko said.