At the ERA annual conference in September, SuperJet International CEO Carlo Logli reported a dispatch reliability rate of 96 to 97 percent recorded by SSJ100 launch customers Armavia and Aeroflot.

He said Sukhoi Civil Aircraft (SCAC) plans to deliver another five aircraft this year, taking the total for 2011 to eight.

Logli called Sukhoi’s original weight plan for the SSJ100 “overambitious,” and said the company hopes to remove at least half of the two-metric-ton excess.

Of course, SJI’s core responsibility lies with marketing and sales. “We are fairly confident that we’ll have something to announce in Africa in the next six months,” said Paulo Revelli-Beaumont, SJI’s senior v-p of sales. “In the U.S., we have responded to a large RFP from Delta and we are in the process of responding to an RFP from Skywest.”