MOSCOW. June 11 (Interfax-AVN) - The U.S. company Boeing is boosting the number of Russian engineers in its Moscow-based design center to 500 people, Sergei Kravchenko, Boeing president for Russia and the CIS, said on Wednesday.
"We are proud of the design center's participation in extremely complicated projects of civilian planes modernization, including the latest Boeing 770-300ER enhanced-range airliner. The plane is taking tests, and its mass production will begin soon," Kravchenko told reporters.
The project involved over 200 Russian engineers from the country's leading design bureaus with which Boeing has cooperated for many years. Russians were engaged in modifying elements of the plane's wing and fuselage, as well as in improving the AC system and the leisure compartment for the crew.
The Boeing design center set up in 1998 has completed the development of over 450 projects of various size and complexity pertaining to the upgrade of all civilian planes produced by Boeing and elements of the International Space Station (ISS). It is Eastern Europe's largest computerized design center in the aerospace sphere, Kravchenko said.
Boeing cooperates with leading design bureaus and enterprises, including the Ilyushin aircraft corporation, Khrunichev space center, and Grazhdanskie Samolyoty Sukhogo company.
The design center employs competent specialists. To allow them to achieve professional understanding with U.S. colleagues, the center teaches them Boeing's engineering methods, the most up- to-date automatic systems of projecting, calculation and data control, quality control systems, and English.
Boeing, headquartered in Chicago, is the world's leading aerospace corporation that exports its products to 145 nations. The company currently employs over 200,000 personnel.