WHAT IT IS

The SJ-100 is the Russian 98–103-seat regional twin that began life as the Sukhoi Superjet 100 (SSJ100). Same tube, same Komsomolsk-on-Amur line, new name after the civil program moved under Yakovlev / UAC “Regional Aircraft.” First flight of the original jet 19 May 2008. Airline service 21 April 2011 with Armavia. About 230-plus airframes built by early 2026, almost all with Franco-Russian PowerJet SaM146 engines.

SJ-100 (also SSJ-NEW, Superjet New) is the import-substituted airplane: Russian avionics, landing gear, interiors, and the Aviadvigatel / UEC-Saturn PD-8 turbofan in place of the SaM146. Same pylon hardpoints so a later shop can pull the French fan and hang the Russian one. It is not a clean-sheet jet. It is the Superjet with the foreign bits cut out after 2022 made the SaM146 unsustainable.

As of September 2026 the PD-8 has a Russian type certificate (5 June 2026) and first production pairs have been handed over. The SJ-100 airframe type certificate is still open — slipped from mid-2026 talk to late 2026 / Q1 2027. Serial-shaped hulls have flown. Airline keys have not.

WHY IT WAS BUILT

Post-Soviet civil aviation had no new regional jet. Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, with Alenia / Leonardo, Thales, and PowerJet (Snecma + NPO Saturn), built a Western-looking 95-seater to sell outside the old Aeroflot world and get EASA ink. EASA certified the 95B in 2012. The bet was globalization. The 2022 sanctions closed the spare-parts tap on the SaM146 and on dozens of systems. The program then had to become a Russian airplane or die on the ramp.

Rename timeline in brief: Sukhoi Superjet 100 → Superjet 100R / SSJ NEW → SJ-100 after Yakovlev took the civil brand in 2023 (the leading S for Sukhoi dropped).

AIRFRAME

Length 29.94 m. Height 10.28 m. Span 27.80 m; 29.7 m with the wingtip fences / sharklets in later talk. Fuselage diameter 3.46 m, cabin ~3.24 m, five-abreast. Wing area ~77–84 m² depending on the sheet. Two-crew glass cockpit. Fly-by-wire. Built at the Yakovlev production centre in Komsomolsk-on-Amur (KnAAZ heritage line).

Empty ~24.25 t. Payload ~12.25 t. Fuel on one card ~15.8 t. Max seats 98 on the classic 95, up to 103 on SJ-100 marketing.

THE TWO ENGINES

PowerJet SaM146 — 1S17 on the 95B (~76.8 kN), 1S18 on the 95LR (~79 kN). Designed as a CFM-class regional fan. After 2022, no legal French half, no happy overhaul path. That is the fleet’s original problem.

PD-8 — two-spool turbofan, ~78 kN / ~8,000 kgf class (about 17,500 lbf). Saturn built it with PD-14 experience, not as a copy of the SaM146 core. Type certificate 5 June 2026, years later than 2023/24 promises. Serial assembly at UEC-Saturn from late June 2026; first two production engines delivered mid-August 2026. Target rate talk is ~30 engines a year if the line holds. Same mount points as the SaM146 so UAC can re-engine existing SSJ100s without a new wing.

Re-engine program for the in-service SaM146 fleet: UAC has spoken of 50–100 conversions, development done ~2027, paid by airlines not a giant federal cheque. One Kommersant leak put ~2.3 billion rubles per ship — in the neighbourhood of a used airframe, about half a new SJ-100 cost card (~5.5 billion). Those numbers move.

CLASSIC MARKS — SSJ100

SSJ100-95B — baseline. MTOW 45.88 t. Landing 41 t. SaM146-1S17. EASA 2012. Typical 87–98 seats. Range in the 3,000 km class with a realistic load.

SSJ100-95LR — long range. MTOW 49.45 t. SaM146-1S18. Range quoted 4,578 km. Same cabin.

Cruise ~830–841 km/h, M 0.78. Max ~M 0.81–0.91 depending on the handbook. Ceiling FL400 / 12,200 m. Field ~1,700–2,000 m class.

Business / VIP interiors existed. Mexican, Irish, and other export attempts were small. Aeroflot Group and regional Russian carriers ate most of the production.

SJ-100 / SSJ-NEW

Same outside. Inside: on the order of 40–60 foreign system names replaced (avionics, FMS/AFCS, landing gear and brakes, windshields, cabin, APU path, etc.). PD-8. Up to 103 seats. Range in the 3,500–4,320 km band on current brochures. MTOW usually quoted on the LR 49.45 t number.

Test fleet that matters:

97021 (MSN 97001) — first SJ-100-shaped flight 29 August 2023, still SaM146, Russian systems trial horse (AFCS, autoland). 97012 — PD-8, partial localization; PD-8 first flight 17 March 2025 (~40 min, 3,000 m, 500 km/h). 97023 (MSN 97003) — first nearly full-domestic new-build, PD-8, first flight 23 April 2025, Komsomolsk. 97024 (MSN 97004) — first serial-configuration ship, first flight 5 September 2025. Two dozen more were in the factory in various stages that week.

Icing trials (Arkhangelsk named) and the rest of the cert matrix were still on the list into 2026.

PLANT AND ORDERS

Only factory that counts: Komsomolsk. Classic SSJ production effectively froze when SaM146 support died. SJ-100 serial talk for 2026 was “about 12” to customers after a type certificate, then a quarter of crew training — so late-summer ops if the paper landed in Q1. It did not. Aeroflot Group is the anchor (34 firm on one 2026 note; earlier political totals of 89 Superjets sit in the same stack as every other slipped UAC slide). Minpromtorg in September 2026 spoke of 40-plus contracted over three years. UAE assembly talk from earlier years is not a 2026 flying line.

Comprehensive aviation program still prints Superjet-NEW next to MC-21 as the domestic narrow-body pair. Hours in the air in 2026 are still mostly old SaM146 frames cannibalizing each other.

WHAT WENT WRONG — SHORT

The type has a public accident file (Aeroflot 1492 at Sheremetyevo 2019 is the one everyone knows). This page is the airplane, not the board. Early years also had dispatch and after-sales pain typical of a first post-Soviet jet sold into a world that expected Boeing/Airbus support. The structural problem after 2022 is simpler: you cannot keep a PowerJet fan alive without the French half.

VERSUS THE EMBRAER AND THE ARJ

Same seat band as an E175/E190 and the ARJ21/C909. The Superjet looked more Western than the Chinese jet and sold fewer than either Embraer line. SJ-100’s only remaining pitch is that it is the regional jet Russia can legally build and spare. That is a sovereignty argument, not a CASM argument against an E2.

STATUS (SEPTEMBER 2026)

Classic SSJ100: in service, parts-constrained, re-engine drawn. PD-8: certified 5 June 2026; first serial pair delivered August 2026. SJ-100 airframe: not yet type-certified; first serial-config flights 2025; deliveries promised “after the certificate,” now pointed at late 2026–2027. Alikhanov said in May 2026 the jet was ready to deliver the day the paper arrives. Paper had not arrived by early September.

Treat every “12 this year” slide as a target, not a delivery log.

IN ONE SENTENCE

The SJ-100 is the Superjet 100 with the SaM146 and the imported systems ripped out and a PD-8 hung on the same pylon — Russia’s only modern regional jet, certified as an engine in June 2026 and still waiting on the airplane certificate that turns Komsomolsk metal into airline seats.