Russian MC-21 jet completes breakthrough test flight

MOSCOW: Russia’s next-generation MC-21 plane completed its first test flight using a Russian-made engine, state corporation Rostec said on Tuesday, after the aircraft’s rollout was delayed by US sanctions.

The medium-range plane’s test flight from the Siberian city of Irkutsk lasted one hour, 25 minutes, and put "our country back in the highest league of civil aviation", said Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov.

The jet was fitted with a fully Russian-produced PD-14 engine, developed after US sanctions barred deliveries of essential parts for the project to Russia. The MC-21 plane made its first test flight in May 2017 and was due to enter into circulation at the end of 2018 until the sanctions forced a delay.

Washington imposed the sanctions barring US companies from exporting products to around a dozen Russian companies in 2018, mainly over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.