FARNBOROUGH 2010: MRJ prepares for design freeze

The critical design review for the Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) is coming to an end with design freeze for the aircraft family expected by the end of summer.

“The programme is on time and we expect to fabricate parts in fourth quarter,” reported Hideo Egawa, president of Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation (MJET).

Junichi Miyakawa, EVP product & marketing, reported that to help with the cockpit design, pilots from the company, from airlines and FAA DER pilots all helped to review the flight deck.

Human input has also been used in the design of the aircraft for easy maintenance. “We’ve made physical mock-ups of bays to aid maintainability,” explained Miyakawa. “CATIA models cannot get tired, so the physical mockup helps to ensure that an engineer is comfortable dealing with LRUs in this space. ANA has been very helpful in this work.”

MJET is developing the MRJ90 first with entry into service in 2014, with the MRJ 70 likely to follow a year later. The MRJ100X is still not an official part of the programme, so no EIS date has been confirmed.

Bernie Baldwin, editor, Low-Fare & Regional Airlines/LARAnews.net
Farnborough, UK

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