Russia has confirmed it is exiting its CR929 joint venture with China.
When Russia invaded Ukraine 18 months ago, Russia’s aviation industry was immediately identified as a target for Western sanctions: Flight connections were cut, and support and parts supply stopped. Moscow refused to return hundreds of commercial aircraft that Western lessors wanted back.
Although it is difficult to obtain much reliable information about the true state of spares supply and the safety of in-service aircraft, details that have been leaked are worrying and show that keeping Russia’s airliner fleet safely operational is becoming more challenging by the day. The long-term structural consequences of Russia’s isolation are also reverberating across commercial aircraft programs that involve some international cooperation. The latest victim is the CR929 widebody project with China.
- Western sanctions are impeding Russia's capabilities
- Further delays affect the MC-21 and Superjet programs
United Aircraft Corp. (UAC) CEO Yury Slyusar earlier this month confirmed for the first time that UAC is no longer a partner in the CR929 joint venture. Although the decision has been made, undoing the joint venture will likely take considerable time, since it involves changing agreements between the governments of China and Russia.
Beijing has not commented on the change of plans. The CR929 has accumulated years of delays and is not expected to enter service until well after 2030 due to lengthy negotiations about sharing work and intellectual property. For months, reports indicated that China had decided to pursue the widebody on its own. Keeping a sanctions-ravaged partner on board would make the project even more difficult.
Russia still hopes to remain involved. Slyusar says Russian industry plans to continue with the program as a normal supplier and builder of the composite wing, PD-35 engines and other subsystems for the aircraft. Although China is not participating in international sanctions against Russia—Comac could, in theory, engage in an industrial partnership with a Russian aerospace company—it is unclear how Western suppliers could take part, given the level of integration work, cooperation and information-sharing in aircraft programs. Potential Western suppliers affected include Eaton, Honeywell, Liebherr, RTX, Safran, Thales, Zodiac Aerospace and an engine manufacturer. In addition to the Russian PD-35, China plans to use the indigenous Aero Engine Corp. of China CJ-2000 engine in development. For many systems, the CR929 would initially rely on Western specialists.
China and Russia formed the China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corp. (CRAIC) in 2017, following years of preparatory work. The aircraft is to be offered in three versions, seating between 250 and 320 passengers in typical configurations.
Separately, deliveries of Yakovlev’s MC-21 will slip further than expected by the Russian government, which is financing the program. “We hope that the first six aircraft will be handed over to Aeroflot in the beginning of 2025,” Anatoly Gaidansky, Yakovlev’s first deputy general director, acknowledged in a podcast with the Moscow Aviation Institute on Aug 13.
Under production plans that Moscow approved in mid-2022, Yakovlev was expected to hand over the MC-21s in 2024 and roll out 270 of them through 2030.
These six MC-21s were initially scheduled to arrive at Aeroflot subsidiary Rossiya Airlines by the end of 2022. The government has extended the deadline for two more years to give the manufacturer additional time to substitute imported components after Western suppliers withdrew from the program.
The MC-21 program gained approval for the Russian PD-14 turbofans and a Russian-made composite wing in December 2022 but still needs to replace many other Western systems, including actuators, avionics and air conditioning, Gaidansky explained.
He said the MC-21 prototype with 70% substituted Western-made equipment would fly beginning in December 2023. The fully import-substituted version, dubbed MC-21-310RUS, is to make its first flight in April 2024 and then receive its supplemental type certificate by the end of that year.
Meanwhile, Aeroflot CEO Sergey Alexandrovsky confirmed in an interview to Russia’s Vedomosti daily newspaper that the airline plans to firm up orders for the first 18 MC-21-310RUS and 34 import-substituted Sukhoi Superjet New (SJ-100) regional jets in September through the Avia Capital Service leasing company. Aeroflot Group placed a preliminary order for 89 SJ-100s, 210 MC-21s and 40 Tupolev Tu-214 aircraft last September.
The group expects to receive the first two SJ-100s by year-end, but those deliveries are also at risk due to the protracted certification process. According to UAC’s Slyusar, deliveries might not start until 2024, which means the manufacturer needs more time to complete the SJ-100 development. The first partially substituted SJ-100 is expected to fly in September. It should be followed by another prototype that will test only Russian-made PD-8 engines and another aircraft in a fully Russian-made configuration. The SJ-100 is planned to be certified before year-end.
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