Maksim covers aerospace developments in Central Asia for Aviation Week. He has worked for Russia's Air Transport Observer magazine and was in charge of several ATO sister aerospace publications after working for the Moscow-based CAST defense think tank.
Maksim has a degree in international relations from MGIMO University, Moscow.
MOSCOW — Irkut Corporation has begun flight tests of the twin-seat Sukhoi Su-30SM multirole fighter. The first aircraft made its 2-hr. first flight on Sept. 21; the second fighter joined the flight tests on Sept. 25, says Irkut, a subsidiary of Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation.
Russia’s Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Company (SCAC) has completed the assembly of the first Sukhoi Superjet 100 regional jet intended for delivery to Mexican air carrier Interjet. Flight trials have already started at SCAC’s Komsomolsk-on-Amur assembly facility, and the aircraft is scheduled to arrive in Venice at the end of September to be outfitted with an interior developed by Italian design company Pininfarina and painted in Interjet’s livery.
Russia’s United Aircraft Corp. (UAC) plans for its 130-seat commercial narrowbody jet to enter the market in 2016-20, said its head, Mikhail Pogosyan, last week at the International Air Transport Forum in Ulyanovsk. The aircraft is intended as a link between the future stretched variant of Sukhoi’s Superjet 100 with 110-115 seats, and the smallest, 150-passenger version of the MS-21.
