"Hungary's national airline Malév is to buy 30 Sukhoi Superjet-100 (SSJ-100) aircraft, local daily Napi Gazdaság has reported on Monday. The 98-seat SSJ-100 was among the exhibited aircraft at the Paris Air Show on Monday where Malév has made its surprise announcement about its plan to buy 30 of the airliner.Malév CEO Martin Gauss and Alessandro Franzoni, CEO of Venice-based SuperJet International, have also signed a Letter of Intent on deal which has a potential value of up to USD 1 billion.
"The new Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft characteristics to fly both regional and medium-haul routes, is perfectly matching Malév's network," said Gauss in a statement.
SuperJet International is a joint venture between Italy's Alenia Aeronautica (51%) and Russia's Sukhoi Holding Company (49%) to ensure the market success of the new Sukhoi Superjet 100 family of regional jetliners.
The first SSJ-100 could be added to Malév's fleet in 2011, to be followed by six new aircraft every consecutive year.
Manufacturing of the jetliners have already commenced in Komsomolsk (Siberia, Russia).
Each of the two standard sizes of the aircraft family (78 and 98 seats) has a basic and a long-range version, designed for use on various-length routes.
A further variant with 115-120 seats is currently under study.
All models in the Sukhoi Superjet 100 family will have the same wing span and the same engine: two SaM146 turbo-fan from PowerJet, a joint venture between SNECMA (France) and NPO Saturn (Russia), which was set up with the specific purpose of developing this new engine.
Franzoni expects 60 to 70 SSJ-100s to be produced annually. In his view, the potential market for aircraft in the regional jet class with 75-100 seats anticipated for the coming 20 years is of 6,100 aircraft, with the Sukhoi Superjet 100 family which is expected to carve out 20-30% of the regional passenger airliner market by 2025.
The Italian-Russian venture already secured orders for 98 SSJ-100s, 30 from Russia's Aeroflot and 35 from western European carriers.
The list price of the plane is USD 30 million, which is regarded hugely favourable even now when the market is under extreme pressure due to the global crisis. The manufacturer claims that the operating costs of the SSJ-100 is smaller than at the rival models of Embraer and Bombardier.
The first of four Sukhoi Superjet 100 prototypes took to the air in May 2008 and the second prototype joined the test flight programme in December 2008. With two aircraft in the air since December 24, 2008, the programme scored over 213 flights for a total of over 650 hours.
The first series airplanes will be delivered to the programme launch customer Aeroflot and Armavia, by the end of 2009."
Source: Portfolio Online Financial Journal
16.06.2009