36 | Flight International | 18-31 August 2015 flightglobal.comRUSSIA
SPECIAL REPORTSTEPHEN TRIMBLE MOSCOWIrkut president Oleg Demchenko knows the MC-21 faces formidable competition, but
the ambitious company is working hard to make its mark on the narrowbody market
STEELY AMBITION
Sanctions have so far had no impact on the MC-21 supply chain, but pressure is on local majors to have greater involvement in commercial programmesThe MC-21’s first flight is expected in 2016IrkutIrkutD
o not question Oleg Demchenko’s
ambition. As the president of Irkut,
the executive is leading a Russian
company with little track record in
the commercial market into a sector already
dominated by Airbus and Boeing.
Though some might still accuse the head of
Irkut of being wildly ambitious, Demchenko
contains his ambition to a set of more practi-
cal goals. It is not commercial parity that Irkut
seeks against Airbus and Boeing with the
MC-21 family of narrowbody airliners, but a
strong foothold in a steadily growing, global
commercial market.
“It would be funny if I said we would get
40-50% of the market. This would not be seri-
ous talk. If I said something like that, my col-
leagues wouldn’t shake hands with me,”
Demchenko says.
But even fractions of the global narrow-body market are worth pursuing, as Airbus
and Boeing deliver more than 1,000 A320s
and 737s combined each year. Irkut’s sister
design bureaus, Ilyushin, Tupolev, Yakovlev
and more recently Sukhoi, have had past suc-
cess in the narrowbody market. Irkut now
hopes to reclaim a share of that glory with an
MC-21 aircraft design produced with the Ya-
kovlev design bureau.
“If our aircraft takes 10-15% of the market,
it means my life in aviation – and all my lifehas been in aviation, as the director of the
company – I would say I did not waste my
time,” Demchenko says.
The MC-21 is less than three years from en-
tering service, so for now he takes comfort in a
respectable order backlog that includes 175
firm orders.
“OK, I am not Airbus,” says Demchenko,
perhaps referencing the nearly 3,800-order
backlog of the A320neo family. “But for an
aircraft which is still on paper, and this our
first try to enter the market with this kind of
aircraft, this is not bad. The most important
task for us right now is to start our flight test.”
Flight testing is on track to begin in 2016 on
a revised schedule. Irkut’s original plan called
for first flight in 2014 to support an entry into
service in 2016.
“There is no aviation programme around
the world which could fulfil the original
schedule,” Demchenko notes. “There is al-
ways a delay. This is a very difficult titanic