Russia’s state-run United Aircraft Corporation said it would fix undercarriage defects found in the new Sukhoi Superjet (SSJ) 100 within a week, after one of its planes had to make an unplanned return to its departure airport on Friday.
An SSJ 100 airliner operated by the Aeroflot airline was on a flight from Moscow to Astrakhan with 65 passengers onboard, when problems with the undercarriage forced the pilot to return to Moscow.
“This defect does not affect passenger safety… We will clear up this problem in all our planes within a week, ” a UAC representative said.
A similar defect in another Aeroflot-operated SSJ plane had to be fixed in Minsk in late December.
Aeroflot is the largest SSJ 100 customer with a total order for 30 planes, six of which have been delivered.
Quoting Aeroflot sources, Vedomosti newspaper last week reported that the Russian aircraft maker Sukhoi had paid unspecified compensation to the nation's largest airline for periods of unserviceability in the company's new SSJ 100s.
