MRJ Starts Low Speed Taxi Tests

Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) began low-speed taxi tests on Monday with the first MRJ90 flight-test aircraft at Nagoya Airport in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture. In a statement, Mitsubishi Aircraft said the taxi tests now under way involve analysis of braking and steering at low speeds.

Although in April it announced a delay to first flight from this spring to September or October, Mitsubishi continues to cite a second-quarter 2017 first delivery target. The company has fully assembled its first two flight-test airplanes. 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.

In a recent interview with AIN, Mitusibishi Aircraft vice president of sales and marketing Yugo Fukuhara explained that “feedback on the airplane and subsequent ground testing” prompted the latest delay to first flight. Specifically, he noted a need to review the structural strength of the ram air turbine (RAT) and address certain software bugs.

“According to the progress of the ground test, we found several areas that needed improvement,” Fukuhara told AIN. He added that Mitusibishi could have flown the airplane in March as previously planned and ground tested the software and RAT improvements afterward. However, the company decided it would rather wait to fly the airplane until it implemented the fixes in the interest of efficiency.

The company plans to carry out much of its flight testing at Grant County Airport in Moses Lake, Washington, to take advantage of its long runways and lack of regularly scheduled airline service there. Other testing sites in the U.S. include Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport in Colorado, where the company plans to conduct high-altitude takeoff and landing tests. Meanwhile, it has chosen Roswell International Air Center in New Mexico for special runway tests and McKinley Climatic Laboratory in Florida for extreme environment testing.

It also plans to employ 150 engineers at a new engineering center in Seattle to support all the testing activity in the U.S.