Mitsubishi has delayed first flight of its MRJ regional jet from this year’s second quarter to September or October “to fully incorporate the verification results of various ground tests and related feedback into the first flight-test aircraft,” the company announced on Friday. However, it said the delay would not affect the latest delivery schedule, and plans still call for entry into service with Japan’s ANA in the second quarter of 2017. “Going forward, MHI [Mitsubishi Heavy Industries] and Mitsubishi Aircraft will implement intensive flight testing after the first flight and accelerate manufacture of the aircraft toward first delivery, as scheduled.”
Meanwhile, the company has finalized a production base expansion plan announced in February, including construction of a new final assembly plant on a site previously owned by Aichi Prefecture, adjacent to Nagoya Airport. Plans call for MHI’s Kobe Shipyard and Machinery Works to produce parts for wings, which the company will then transport to Nagoya Aerospace Systems Works’ Tobishima Plant for fabrication on dedicated assembly lines now under construction.
Mitsubishi has also begun the process of forming a “cluster” of companies that would form a so-called production collaboration association to produce and integrate aircraft parts at the Matsusaka plant in Mie Prefecture. Finally, the company announced that Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Aero Engines in Komaki, Aichi Prefecture, will perform final assembly of the production airplanes’ Pratt & Whitney PW1200G “geared turbofan” engines. To date, Pratt & Whitney has delivered four PW1200Gs from its plant in Mirabel, Canada, to Mitsubishi for use in development aircraft, including the first pair that began ground testing on the first prototype airframe in January.
The MRJ’s first flight will mark the start of a planned 2,500-hour flight-test program using five flying prototypes. Function tests of various systems on the first flight-test airplane began last September, and testing on the static-strength test aircraft—one of two ground-test articles—started on October 10.
Plans call for the first flying prototype to perform envelope expansion and systems tests, the second to carry out performance and function tests, the third to evaluate detailed flight characteristics and avionics tests, the fourth to perform interior, community noise and icing tests and the fifth to assess autopilot function. Although the company plans to do most of its flight-testing from Nagoya, it has also arranged for some of the trials to take place at Moses Lake, Washington, in the U.S.
Having collected firm orders for 223 airplanes, Mitsubishi Aircraft has struggled to gain credibility in a market segment now led by the new Embraer E2s, all three models of which will also use Pratt & Whitney “geared turbofans” similar in design to the PW1200G used in the MRJ. The Japanese program has so far suffered three major delays since its launch in March 2008. The most recent setback resulted from the company’s failure to forecast the effects of new U.S. Federal Aviation Administration procedures introduced in 2009 to validate regulatory compliance of production processes. The new rules shifted Mitsubishi’s testing schedule by as much as two years, meaning, if all goes as now planned, the time between program launch and certification would span more than nine years.
As first flight approaches, however, interest in the program appears to have intensified, as sales activity gathers some pace. Most recently, the MRJ program gained a coveted endorsement from Japan Airlines, which placed a firm order for 32 of the Japanese airplanes in late January.