Mitsubishi Airliner “Not Strong Enough”

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Mitsubishi has pushed back the certification and delivery schedule of its MRJ regional jet by at least a year, saying the aircraft might not be strong enough to meet certification requirements. In a surprise announcement on Christmas Eve, Mitsubishi Aircraft President Hiromichi Morimoto said the 90-seat aircraft meets so-called “normal use” requirements but the company is worried it won’t pass certification tests that push those limits to 150 percent of normal specs. “This is Japan’s first new passenger plane in 50 years and on paper everything looked fine,” he told reporters. “However, when we built it we found places to improve that we hadn’t banked on.”

The delay puts the MRJ in a tough spot because airline tastes at the low end of the market are changing. According to Air Transport World, Delta and United are both looking for 100-seat (economy and premium economy) platforms for use on less busy routes that they currently serve using partly empty Boeing 737s and A320s. The biggest MRJ (92 seats, all economy) doesn’t meet those requirements and the latest delay will likely mean Bombardier’s CSeries and Embraer’s revamped E series airliners will have the new market to themselves for years to come. Meanwhile, Mitsubishi told the Seattle Times testing and engineering work at Georgetown and Moses Lake, Washington, will continue as planned.

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