MOSCOW, November 15 (RIA Novosti) - Two hundred Russian engineers in Moscow are designing a cargo aircraft, the Boeing-747LCF, that will be used to deliver components for the new Boeing-787 Dreamliner passenger plane.
"Moscow is handling the design of this special cargo plane, which will deliver components produced in Japan, Britain, France, and Russia to the aircraft-manufacturing plant in Seattle for final assembly of the Dreamliner, which will only take three days," Sergei Kravchenko, the president of U.S. aircraft giant Boeing in Russia and the CIS, said.
Kravchenko said the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) had built an experimental test bench for static and dynamic tests of life-size fuselage panels of the Boeing-787.
Under the Dreamliner project, Boeing also cooperates with the Russian Academy of Sciences and the All-Russian Aviation Materials Institute (VIAM).
Kravchenko said the new project had caused Boeing to increase its purchases of industrial titanium alloys in Russia.
The tests of the Boeing-787 will be finished in 2006. The plane will conduct its first flight in 2007 and will be supplied to the first buyer in Japan in 2008.
The volume of the market for the Dreamliner, which will replace the 767 model, is estimated at
3,500 planes over the next 20 years.
The Russia-Boeing Dreamliner project is being conducted within the framework of an agreement signed in November 2004 between the Russian Industry and Energy Ministry and Boeing.
