By RIA Novosti
Yerevan : Armenia will be the first country to receive new Sukhoi SuperJet-100 airplanes from Russia, the Russian transport minister said on Wednesday.
The SuperJet 100 project is a family of medium-range passenger aircraft developed by the Sukhoi Design Bureau in cooperation with major American and European aviation corporations, including Boeing, Snecma, Thales, Messier Dowty, Liebherr Aerospace, and Honeywell.
“The first aircraft will be supplied to [Russia’s flagship carrier] Aeroflot, and the first delivery abroad will be made to Armenia,” Igor Levitin said.
He said a $50 million contract for the delivery of two airplanes to Armenia’s Armavia airline in 2008 was signed last September.
Russia and Armenia intend to raise bilateral trade to $1 billion, the countries’ prime ministers said on Wednesday. In 2007, trade turnover exceeded $0.7 billion.
Sukhoi head Mikhail Pogosyan said his company anticipates growing demand for SSJ-100s once they enter the market.
The aircraft maker said last month it is planning to sell 150 new Sukhoi SuperJet-100 aircraft, saying so far it had 73 contracts.
It plans to manufacture at least 700 SuperJet 100s, and intends to sell 35% of them to North America, 25% to Europe, 10% to Latin America, and 7% to Russia and China.
The list price of a 95-seat base model is $28 million, but the company is currently working on both smaller and larger capacity modifications.
The SuperJet 100 has an estimated $100 billion market for around 5,500 planes, through 2023.