The Russian Ministry of Industry announced in recent days that the Russian LMS-901 Baikal aircraft will receive its airworthiness certificate by the end of 2022 and will therefore be put on the market in 2023. Meanwhile, work is underway to build a factory for these aircraft at the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Russian Far East.

The Baikal airplane made its first flight on January 30th 2022 over the skies of the city of Yekaterinburg. The aircraft is an aluminium high-wing monoplane powered by a US-made General Electric H80-200 engine. It will be able to accommodate nine passengers. It has a cruising speed of up to 300 km/h and its range is expected to be 3,000 km without payload. The cost is around 1.6 million dollars.

Moscow has high hopes for this aircraft as it is destined to replace the obsolete Antonov An-2. In the Autumn of 2019, in fact, the manufacturer Baikal was selected as the winner of the tender for the development of a new type of aircraft in this category.