Russian air liner of the latest generation Superjet-100, which belongs to the Yakutia air company, has made its first commercial flight from the Russian city of Yakutsk to the Chinese city of Harbin. The flight took two and a half hours.

The Yakutia company performs flights from Yakutsk to Harbin and back once a week, on Thursdays, but this is the first time that it is sending the new plane “Superjet-100” to Harbin.

It is also planned that in several days from now, the new plane will make a trial flight from Yakutsk to Beijing.

The Editor-in-Chief of the Russian magazine Aviatransportnoe Obozrenie (Air transport review) Alexey Sinitsky believes that most likely, air companies in China and other Asian countries will be interested in buying the new Russian air liner.

“As a Russian proverb goes, “It is better to see something with one’s own eyes just once than to hear about it one hundred times,”” Mr. Sinitsky says. “It is one thing for the Chinese to hear that Russians have made a new good plane and quite another thing to see the plane itself. I am sure that after seeing it, they will become very interested in buying it.”

It would be, of course, a triumph for Russia if it starts to sell the new jet to Asian countries, but this will also mean great responsibility for Russia. An expert from the Transport Committee of the Russian Parliament’s lower house Roman Gusarov says:

“The new jet should be very reliable if we want the prestige of Russian aircraft producers in the world to be high. If China buys this plane and is satisfied with it, this would probably inspire other countries to be interested in buying it too.”

“The creators of the new Russian plane are assuring that it does not lag behind its Western analogues in many aspects, like, say, comfort and fuel consumption,” Mr. Gusarov continues, “but the Chinese, of course, would agree with this only after testing the plane for some time.”

Superjet-100 is already being actively used in Russia. It makes up to 3,000-km-long flights within Russia, and has already proved itself a reliable plane.

It is expected that besides flights to Harbin, the Yakutia company will perform flights from Yakutsk to Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Seoul and other cities in Russia and abroad.

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_02_28/Russia-to-show-new-Superjet-100-to-China/