Since 2007 the Mitsubishi Company in Japan had been spending millions on a project to develop the first-ever all-Japanese airliner, but now it’s been scrubbed.
Japanese Space Jet test plane demolished in Moses Lake
The Moses Lake Airport has been the site of very significant world-impacting aircraft tests, this was no different. The Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation, known as MHI from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, had begun work on building a fleet of 70-90 passenger regional jet airliners in 2007, and in 2015 moved four aircraft to Moses Lake. They planned to base four of them from that field.
But according to the website FlightGlobal, the project has been formally scrubbed. Originally, MHI had orders for about 200 of these aircraft, split between 3 different models. However, a series of production issues, bugs, and then COVID put it far behind and MHI has dumped the idea…but not for good.
FlightGlobal says despite the setback, Mitsubishi hopes to return soon to air travel projects. This would have been the first Japanese-designed and built airliner.
The Moses Lake test plane dismantled on Wednesday
FlightGlobal published several pictures of the test plane, an M90 model that was built in 2015, being split apart and dismantled at the Moses Lake Airport. The fate of the other test aircraft is not yet known.
The initial announcement that the project was terminated came in late February, it is believed none of the aircraft were formally delivered to airlines for commercial use.
MHI has not formally commented on how much money was lost on the project, but it is said to be in the hundreds of millions.
LET’S GO: The most popular historic sites in America