9 September 2011 saw the first operational flight of the An-148-100E (RA-61709) of the Polyot airline, the second Russian user of the advanced regional airliners made in Voronezh. The 1 h 40 min. flight with 56 passengers on board was conducted from Voronezh to St. Petersburg. The aircraft came back to Chertovitskoye airport in Voronezh on the return flight on the same day. An hour-long An-148-100E service was also launched to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on 29 September. By then, the carrier’s airliner fleet had been beefed up with another aircraft of the type, RA-61710. As its own crews are trained and the maintenance system is set up in its home airport, Polyot is going to expand its operational network and intensify the operations. Polyot Director General Anatoly Karpov said: “The characteristics of the An-148-100E will enable the company to connect the regions in central Russia with the regional centres in the Urals and Siberia and to launch tourist services to Egypt, Spain, Italy, the UAE, Israel, etc”.

On 1 September 2011, Algerian Air Force pilots performed their first solo flights on Yak-130 combat trainers at the airfield of the Irkutsk Aircraft Plant, an affiliate of the Irkut corporation. Their flights had been preceded by a three-month-long ground school, during which the Algerian pilots logged a total of 100-plus sorties on Yak-130s together with Irkut’s test pilots in the role of their instructor pilots and were cleared for solo flights. Prior to that, a large group of Algerian military engineers and technicians had been trained in operating and maintaining the Yak-130.

No doubt, the spice of the MAKS 2011 air show in Zhukovsky, Moscow Region, in August was the long-awaited unveiling of prototypes of the Future Tactical Fighter (Russian acronym – PAK FA) – Russian fifth-generation fighter T-50 the Sukhoi company is developing in cooperation with its engine, aircraft material, avionics, airborne systems and weapons subcontractors. The PAK FA made its debut on the second day of the show, when both flying T-50 prototypes were demonstrated in flight to Russian Premier Vladimir Putin. They flew as a pair, after which the Sukhoi design bureau’s test pilot Sergei Bogdan flew aerobatics on the T-50-1. On the following days of MAKS 2011, the second T-50 prototype, the T-50-2, was used in the flight demonstration programme. It would first lead a Sukhoi aircraft ‘troika’ with a Su-34 and a Su-35 as its wingmen and then perform solo aerobatics.

The Tu-214ON specialised airborne surveillance aircraft developed under the Open Skies programme was a spice of the MAKS 2011 air show. It took to the skies for the first time from the airfield of the Kazan Aircraft Production Association (KAPO) on 1 June of this year and is undergoing tests. The plane was developed by Tupolev and built by KAPO on order of the Vega corporation, the prime contractor under the Open Skies programme. Once its trials have been complete, it will be delivered to the Russian Defence Ministry.

During MAKS 2011, one of the central places in UAC’s pavilion was allocated to the MC-21 short-to-medium-range airliner under development by the Irkut corporation. The future airliner’s full-scale flight-deck and cabin mockup known from the air shows in Farnborough and Le Bourget was shown in Russia for the first time. Nearby, one could see a full-scale mockup of the Pratt & Whitney PW1400G geared turbofan engine that had come up on top in the tender for a powerplant to power the MC-21. One also could see for the first time a full-scale prototype of the ‘black’ wing of the MC-21 that had been undergoing static trials in TsAGI since May this year.