According to the Flightradar24 tracking of RA-73051, the flight test MC-21-300 has been busy. On September 13 Irkut announced that it started the second stage of flight testing. During preparation to the second stage tensometric (strain-measuring) sensors were installed to measure stress and some software bugs were fixed.
The aircraft has flown several times recently. Because of the poor coverage in Irkutsk, the activity only shows up on ADS-B well into the flight. (The same thing applies to the E2 program tests). It would be great if the Irkutsk and Araraquara airports got FR24 receivers (hint).
- September 22 – 4 Hours 3 minutes
- September 23 – 5 hours 1 minute
- September 24 – 4 hours 21 minutes
- September 26 – 2 hours 50 minutes There some steep climbs a few speed dashes. IRKUT also notified that thrust reversers were checked. The aircraft is getting ready to relocate to the Zhukovsky test base for certification. This move could come some time in October. There is appears to be growing confidence in the aircraft.
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Hello,
The MC-21 Flight testing is rapidly expanding as test results and aircraft demonstrated performance provide more confidence to Irkut testing crew.
There is a strong need for a thorough analysis of these diagram. For exemple, the curves, showing a many different areas of the graphs, the aircraft at constant altitude but at very different speed may demonstrate the ability of the aircraft to uses high lift devices at high altitudes while maintaining excellent control of the aircraft while the aircraft is flying in automatic mode.
The behavior of the aircraft showing higly variable speed at constant high altitude may also indicate the presence of strong cross wind at high altitude causing the aircraft automated system to react in such a way that the altitude stays the same.!
Could an aircraft test specialist comment the above statement?
Irkut installed more than 500 stress sensors on the aircraft at the end of phase one testing. It would be interesting to know the analysis of these data as compared with operational data such as aircraft weight, altitude, manoeuvers, climbing ans landing, etc.
Of equal interest is the performance and ability of the out of autoclave fiber wing to sustain stress as compared to operational manoevers for different weight within the flight enveloppe.
At this stage of testing does Irkut has evaluated the aircraft fuel consumption which is of paramount importance to the success of this aircraft?
It is unfortunate that Flightradar 24 removed all MC-21 historical data after the 26 september 2017: «Sorry, historical data for this aircraft is not available. »
However it maintains considerable data for Mitsibishi MRJ and Comac C919 aircraft as well as Antonov-12.
I made the remark to Flightradar24 but did not get any answer yet!!!
Jean Ubota