Italy is ready to buy a significant number of Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet 100 medium-haul airliners, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Monday.
"This is our first civil aircraft... which corresponds with the most recent civil aviation requirements, and our Italian partners are now ready to buy them in quite large numbers," Putin said during a United Russia party congress in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, accompanied by Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, inspected a Superjet aircraft in Sochi last Friday. The plane arrived in the southern Russian city on a test flight from northern Siberia's Yakutsk.
The Superjet 100 is a family of medium-haul passenger aircraft developed by Sukhoi in cooperation with U.S. and European aviation corporations, including Boeing, Snecma, Thales, Messier Dowty, Liebherr Aerospace and Honeywell.
The aircraft is capable of carrying 75-95 passengers to the distance of up to 4,500 kilometers. Currently, there are 17 SSJ 100 aircraft in production at different stages of completion.
Sukhoi has at least 122 firm orders for Superjet 100 airliners at the moment. The first aircraft are expected to be delivered to Armenia's national airline Armavia and Russia's flagship air carrier Aeroflot at the end of the year.
KHABAROVSK, December 6 (RIA Novosti)
