Mitsubishi Aircraft has taken delivery of the first Pratt & Whitney PW1200G geared turbofan engines for its MRJ regional jet.

The airframer says the engines were delivered to its final assembly factory in the Aichi Prefecture, and were shipped from the engine maker's Mirabel facility.

“Pratt & Whitney shipped the PurePower engine in preparation of being mounted on the first MRJ flight test aircraft. The delivery of the engine marks a major milestone towards MRJ’s completion, accelerating the final-assembly process with components,” says Mitsubishi.

The delivery of the engines was initially scheduled to be in late April. Mitsubishi told Flightglobal last month that the delay was “due to the change of delivery schedule for equipment agreed between our company and partners”, and that the change will not affect the aircraft’s first flight.

The MRJ is scheduled to take its first flight in 2Q 2015. Mitsubishi has rolled out its first ground test aircraft in preparation for static strength tests, and its first flight test aircraft is also in final assembly.

Bombardier has however had to suspend the testing of its CSeries programme after a failure involving a PW1500G engine on the first flying prototype on 29 May.

Source: Cirium Dashboard