Ural Airlines and Grazhdanskiye Samolyoty Sukhogo (Sukhoi Civil Aircraft) signed an agreement of intent regarding the purchase of five SuperJet100 airplanes.

'Ural Airlines thus made it clear that they intend to support Russian aircraft makers and, since the carrier needs some new airplanes with small seating capacity, the company held preliminary talks with representatives of Sukhoi Civil Aircraft; the agenda of this meeting covered looking into the technical characteristics of the aircraft and giving Ural Airlines’ future business partners all the data on the potential travel routes so that they could calculate the economic characteristics as well.

'The planes will probably be supplied in 2009-2011; they will help us make our current flights around Russia more frequent and introduce new flights as well,’ Ural Airlines’ Production Director Vladimir Chikilev says.

'We expect to purchase five Superjet100 planes that meet the current and prospective demands imposed by both the domestic and foreign civil aviation markets,' says the carrier’s Commercial Director Kirill Skuratov.

SuperJet100 planes are highly praised by aviation experts and are believed to be able to compete with Canadian Bombardier and Brazilian Embraer.