Moscow — Russia's SJ-100 short-haul passenger jet, stripped of imported parts, has completed its first test flight, according to officials.
Industry Minister Denis Manturov spoke of a success for Russia's aviation industry, according to a statement issued on Tuesday. The sector is one of the hardest hit by the Western sanctions that followed Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
The test flight of the SJ-100 using only domestically assembled parts, reportedly lasted about 54 minutes. In that time, the aircraft reached an altitude of 3,000 metres and a top speed of 343 kilometres per hour.
Despite this speed, which is rather low for jet aircraft, the authority considered the test flight a success, saying that it "confirmed the stable functioning of all domestic systems and the aircraft's control capability and stability in the air."
The SJ-100 is a scaled-down version of a regional aircraft which has been in production since 2010 and contained many foreign parts. After the war began, the US and the EU not only banned the export of Boeing and Airbus planes to Russia, but also the supply of components.
That has forced Russian airlines to obtain their spare parts from decommissioned aircraft.
In the meantime, however, the largest companies have found ways to circumvent the sanctions, according to media reports. The independent portal Vyorstka says the country's four largest companies, Aeroflot, S7, Pobeda and Rossiya, have between them imported components worth a total of around €100 million since the beginning of the year.
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