The first anniversary of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 commercial operations in Aeroflot
June 20, 2012, Moscow – A year ago, on June 16, 2011 Aeroflot – Russian Airlines put its first Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft MSN 95008 in commercial operations. The SSJ100 aircraft named after the outstanding soviet pilot Mikhail Vodopyanov and received tail number RA-89001 successfully performed its first commercial flight on route Moscow – St Petersburg.
In 2011 Aeroflot received and put in operation three additional SSJ100 aircraft (MSN 95010 & RA-89002, MSN 95011 & RA-89003 and MSN 95012 & RA-89004) in August, November and December respectively. In 2012 four aircraft (MSN 95015 & RA-89007, MSN 95013 & RA-89005, MSN 95016 & RA-89008 and MSN 95014 & RA-89006) joined the airline's fleet and started to perform revenue flights in January, March, April and May respectively. The acceptance of the ninth Aeroflot's aircraft (MSN 95017 & RA-89009) will start in Komsomolsk-on-the Amur this week. In 2012 Aeroflot plans to receive five additional Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft.
By June 15, 2012 eight SSJ100s of Aeroflot accumulated 6,865 flight hours in 3,710 revenue flights and carried more than 220,000 passengers. Aeroflot's SSJ100s performed scheduled flights from Moscow to 27 destinations in Russia (Anapa, Astrakhan, Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Nizhnevartovsk, Nizhnekamsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Orenburg, Perm, Samara, St Petersburg, Ufa and Chelyabinsk), Ukraine (Donetsk and Odessa), Belarus (Minsk) and Europe (Budapest, Bucharest, Vilnius, Dresden, Copenhagen, Krakow, Oslo, Sofia and Stockholm).
The best results in terms of monthly utilization were reached by aircraft MSN 95011 and MSN 95016 in May 2012 with a figure of 249 and 240 flight hours respectively. The biggest numbers of flights per month were performed by aircraft MSN 95010 and MSN 95008 in September and August 2011 and stood at 151 and 157 flights. The largest daily utilization reached 16 flight hours.
Aeroflot's SSJ100 operations showed that the aircraft is able to efficiently serve both regional routes with the high frequency of departure and short haul routes. The SSJ100 of Aeroflot was able to perform three return flights per day, achieving daily utilization over than 10 flight hours.
"We are positive in evaluating the first year of our SSJ100 operations taking in account the fact that Aeroflot applied same rigid requirements to the technical condition of the new Russian airliner as to the Airbus and Boeing aircraft currently in its fleet. While the aircraft went through the initial phase of operations, we paid particular attention to its overall performance. Taking into account the high quality standards of Aeroflot, we believe that the work aimed at further improving the technical support efficiency conducted by SCAC and its partners will definitely lead to an expansion of the operational performance of our growing SSJ100 fleet in the near future", noted Chief of the Aeroflot SSJ100 pilots team Evgeny Voronin.
"Sukhoi Superjet 100 is the new aircraft type, and we are satisfied with the results of the first year of operations of our aircraft with Aeroflot. These results achieved through joint efforts of Aeroflot, SCAC, SuperJet International and PowerJet sometimes exceeded those of many other new aircraft types in the first year of their commercial operations. For us it is important that the SSJ100 showed high safety rates for the new aircraft type and received positive feedback from Aeroflot pilots. We are continuously working on the enhancement of the production's quality and range of services to our operators", stressed President of Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk.
Activities to establish and enhance the after-sales support system have been carried out during the first year of operations. Over the last six months the implementation of the monitoring system of operations allowed to minimize a number of issues related to the aircraft acceptance, to reduce of three times the notes to the operational documentation, to optimize the spare parts' delivery time to 48 hours maximum and to heavily cut the troubleshooting time.
Training for the airline's flight and technician staff for the SSJ100 aircraft is an important field to be focused on. The whole training is accomplished by SuperJet International, the joint venture between Alenia Aermacchi and Sukhoi Holding, by the Training Center in Zhukovsky by applying the international aviation and safety standards. Up to date and since the beginning of the training courses in February 2011 47 AFL crews (94 pilots including 42 pilots without previous "glass cockpit" experience), 24 flight attendant-instructors and 118 engineering technical specialists (94 in 2011 and 24 in 2012) were trained. Within the end of 2012 additional 16 AFL flight crews and around 40 AFL technicians will be trained.
A Full Flight Simulator (FFS) will be delivered to the Aeroflot training center in Sheremetyevo in October 2012.
