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Sukhoi Superjet Behind Schedule

Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov, who heads the commission to monitor the implementation of the Sukhoi Superjet program, wrote to Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko about the progress of the aircraft’s certification in early June. Data from May 28 show that the certification process is getting behind schedule, notes Manturov.

Because of delays in processing the test data, certification of the airframe has been delayed, and the period of tests for avionics certification has been extended until September 2010. But since only 25 percent of summer flight tests for electronics testing have been implemented, the commission supposes that the new term will have an “exclusively mobilizing character.” The program of flight safety tests has been only 60 percent completed, and there is no evidence of documents from the Aviation Register of the International Aviation Committee for safety analysis, the document said.

But most of the problems are with the SaM146 engine, developed by PowerJet, which is a joint project between the Russian Saturn and the French Snecma. Work on its final design has been almost entirely completed and certification is more than 90 percent completed, but problems remain, notes Manturov. The engine still does not fully satisfy the technical requirements: Thus, its fuel consumption is still 2.7 percent to 3.2 percent more than planned, its weight is 114.3 kilograms more than it should be, and so on.

In addition, the engine has a number of defects, including a “destruction of the disk clip in the third stage of the pressure recovery curve” that happened three times during the testing period. The cause of this defect was not specified in the letter.

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