Russian aircraft manufacturer Irkut has flown the second MC-21-300 test aircraft. The aircraft’s six-hour flighton July 20 was from Irkutsk to the Gromov institute at Moscow’s Zhukovsky airfield, where it joins the first MC-21-300 flight-test aircraft, which flew to the institute October 2017.
The aircraft was reported to have functioned normally with no system failures, according to test pilot Vasily Sevastyanov.
The second aircraft has now conducted 20 hours of test flights from the Irkutsk assembly plant since its maiden flight on May 12. According to Irkut it has been flown to altitudes of 12,000m (39,400ft) and at speeds of up to 0.8 Mach.
So far the aircraft has undergone stability and wing-configuration checks, calibration of air-data systems for airspeed and altitude, and in-flight engine restarts.
Both aircraft will be tested further at the Gromov centre, where equipment and facilities have been constructed that Irkut says enable data for more than 30,000 parameters to be collected during every test flight.
