Our MS-21 performed an automatic landing according to ICAO category IIIA already on Russian PD-14 engines.

The flight was performed on the MS-21 b/n 73051, the crew included pilots Roman Taskaev and Igor Chernov (GosNIIGA), as well as leading flight test engineers Oleg Berezin and Pavel Sokut.

Category IIIA means that landing is allowed with a runway visibility range of at least 200 meters and a decision height of less than 30 meters. An aircraft applying for Category III must provide automatic control up to touching the runway.

This flight was carried out as part of the test program of the automatic landing complex — in total, it is planned to perform about 100 flights. The software algorithms and hardware information and computing complex of the control system that ensure the automatic landing of the MS-21 were originally developed in Russia. The first flight under this program was performed in December 2023 on an aircraft with an imported power plant.