MONTERREY, September 19 (RIA Novosti) - Mexico’s low-cost airline Interjet on Wednesday started commercial flights using Russian-made Sukhoi Superjet-100 aircraft, the Mexican company said.
“We have started commercial flights along six routes,” Interjet said.
The Mexican airliner has signed a contract with Superjet International worth $800 million to purchase 20 Superjet planes and has taken up an option to buy another 10 aircraft, Interjet executive director Miguel Aleman Magnani said earlier.
According to Mexican laws, the certification process a plane needs to go through in order to be used for commercial flights requires that it completes 100 hours of flying time.
The SuperJet-100 (SSJ-100) is a short-to-medium haul passenger aircraft developed by Sukhoi in cooperation with US and European aviation corporations including Boeing, Snecma, Thales, Messier Dowty, Liebherr Aerospace and Honeywell.
The aircraft is capable of carrying up to 100 passengers for up to 4,500 kilometers. The SSJ-100 had a series of accidents in recent years. The biggest one was in May 2012 when an SSJ-100 crashed into a mountain south of Jakarta while performing a demonstration flight in Indonesia with 45 people onboard. No one survived the crash.
