Certification of modern aircraft is an important element in its creation. It is not just a matter of ensuring national airworthiness since the aircraft must also meet the airworthiness requirements of foreign states, in particular, those of the EU countries. To a significant extent, that is what helps civil aircraft enter the global market, be competitive and continually exploitable in other countries.

Presently, the leader of domestic aircraft-building, MC-21 is undergoing certification procedure by EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency).

Before proceeding to certification tests of the aircraft, the EASA crew must undergo theoretical and practical training with specialized flight simulators, and then with a real aircraft.

As part of the practical training, the crew consisting of two EASA pilots and a test engineer exercised various flight scenarios at the MC-21 flight simulator at TsAGI.

“The flight bench simulated various flight modes, including the ones which can be hardly demonstrated in real flight conditions or are too unsafe to be reproduced in flight tests,” said Valery Matveev, Director of TsAGI’s Certification Center. “The visit by EASA pilots/experts was the first but far not the last one. The bench developed by TsAGI’s specialists will be used to train pilots and accomplish other missions like preparation for flights with probable functional failures modeling, practicing of modes for automatic flight control, studies for the assessment of strong influence by side and shear wind.” added he.