By Bjorn Fehrm

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Introduction

July 28, 2016, ©. Leeham Co: In February we did a first analysis of the new Irkut MC-21 single aisle aircraft that Russia is developing. We found that the aircraft has its own profile; it's not a copy of a Western design. Irkut is the company within Russia's United Aircraft group which is developing MC-21 (or rather, its design bureau, Yakovlev, is). Irkut has also gone its own way in sizing the aircraft.

Figure 1. MC-21-300 at the roll out in June 2016. Source: Irkut.

In our February analysis, we found that the first aircraft being developed, the MC-21-300, is larger than both the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 MAX 8, the present top sellers in the single aisle market. At the time, we decided to analyze the aircraft which was closest to those two in size, MC-21-200, which is the second variant in development. We will now look at the larger MC-21-300 (Figure 1), the aircraft which rolled out in June and which will fly early next year.

Summary:

• The MC-21 has its own profile; it is not a copy of a Western aircraft. It has a wider cabin than the A320 and a higher capacity in its base variant, the MC-21-300.
• The MC-21-300 is smaller than an A321. It most closely resembles a Boeing 737 MAX 9 in size. We will therefore conduct the analysis of the MC-21-300 by comparing it to the largest Boeing MAX variant.