The Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Company (SCAC) has begun testing the Russian Superjet 100, which will expand the possibility of basing this aircraft up to 78о15' north latitude, reported by manufacturer's Facebook page.
On March 21, test aircraft tail number 97005 landed in the northernmost civil airport Svalbard on Spitzbergen.
This expedition will allow us to broaden the land-basing limitations up to 78 degrees and 15 minutes of northern latitude. After performing the planned test flight program the aircraft returned to snow-covered Moscow the same evening.
The program consisted of: landing, taxiing, turning all the systems off and taking a picture of the crew with the flag, turning all the systems on, testing different variants of inertial system settings, take off and landing at home in Zhukovsky.
"Arctic is unique and that is why the conditions of flight there are really special. There might occur some peculiarities during navigation complex performance. For example, there might be some trouble with the inertial system settings, because in this region they work close to the limits set by the manufacturer, and there might be some difficulties with GPS, because of lack of the navigation satellites. And other polar peculiarities. The Fifth did it!)) and the bears liked it) now we are waiting for the certification.", noted at SCAC message.
Superjet 100 certification for the expansion of the basing capabilities of this aircraft is planned for the second quarter of 2018. Expansion of the basing capabilities of Superjet 100 is expected fore one of the current customers from Russia.