Aircraft
Superjet 100 soars onto international stage
Sukhoi’s new Superjet 100 airliner is making a triumphant international debut here at the Paris Air Show.

Sukhoi’s new Superjet 100 airliner is making a triumphant international debut here at the Paris Air Show. For the program’s Russian and Italian partners, the Le Bourget stage is an ideal setting to signal to the market that the twinjet has got back on track after some technical delays, with first deliveries now set to happen before year-end.

The next variation of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 will almost certainly involve a stretch of the existing 95-seat baseline platform, leaving the once highly anticipated 75-seat version in a state of virtual limbo. In fact, according to Superjet International CEO Alessandro Franzoni, plans for a smaller version of the airplane have virtually stalled, while designers concentrate their efforts on determining the optimum configuration for a larger Superjet variant that could hold as many as 120 passengers.