Russia’s First Production-Standard MC-21-310 Makes Its Maiden Flight

On August 3, 2026, the first production-standard MC-21-310 narrowbody flew for the first time from the airfield of the Irkutsk Aviation Plant in Siberia. State conglomerate Rostec said the aircraft spent 1 hour 23 minutes airborne, reaching 372 mph (600 km/h) and 19,700 feet (6,000 m).

According to Rostec, the crew checked stability and handling in several configurations and verified the operation of the domestically developed onboard systems. The flight plan was completed in full.

Test pilot Roman Taskayev said the assembly-line aircraft performed well, in comments carried by The Moscow Times. United Aircraft Corporation chief executive Vadim Badekha said the Irkutsk line is preparing an initial batch of 18 aircraft.

Why a “production-standard” first flight is its own milestone

The Yakovlev MC-21 has been flying since 2017, so this was not the type’s first flight. It was the first flight of an airframe built on the serial production line rather than by a development shop.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Prototypes are assembled slowly, by hand, by engineers who can work around a part that does not fit. A production aircraft has to come together on tooling, to a takt time, using the supply chain that will feed every later delivery.

Rostec framed the flight in exactly those terms, saying it confirms that the production chains are ready for serial manufacturing of the type. Manufacturers everywhere run this step to expose the gap between a hand-built demonstrator and a factory product before customers start taking jets.

The bill for building it entirely at home

The MC-21 was designed as a Western-equipped aircraft, with Pratt & Whitney PW1400G engines, imported avionics and a composite wing that relied on US and Japanese materials. US sanctions cut off the composite supply in 2018, and the broader sanctions that followed the 2022 invasion of Ukraine removed the rest.

The MC-21-310 is the answer: Aviadvigatel PD-14 engines and Russian systems throughout. Russia has been here before with the Sukhoi Superjet 100, which had to be re-engineered around domestic parts after its foreign suppliers withdrew, and Iran is running a similar playbook with its Simorgh turboprop.

Substitution is rarely weight-neutral. Russian reporting has put the import-substituted airframe at roughly 5.75 tonnes (about 12,700 lb) heavier than the Western-equipped MC-21-300, which pushed range down from the original target.

Certification is still the long pole

Four development aircraft have been carrying the certification campaign. Specialist outlet RuAviation reported they flew 136 sorties totalling just under 510 hours between January and July 2026, putting the program at roughly the halfway mark.

The target date is not settled. Rostec has pointed to completing certification by late 2026 with commercial service months later, while Rostec head Sergei Chemezov has previously put the end of certification flying and the start of serial production in 2027.

Building the first 18 aircraft in parallel with testing is a deliberate hedge, meant to shrink the gap between approval and delivery. It is also a bet that nothing found in the remaining half of the flight-test program forces a change to jets already on the line.

How the program got here

Even a fully certified MC-21 faces the problem every challenger runs into, which is that Airbus and Boeing dominate this segment on scale, support networks and residual values rather than on the aircraft alone. Sanctions have handed Yakovlev a captive home market, and for now that is the market the aircraft is built for.