I agree the Sukhoi 100 is a great aircraft. It's so easy to fly that even a cave man ( GEICO commercial) or a RT reporter ( Nataliya Novikova) can fly it! I hope that more airlines buy the Sukhoi 100 RRJ. I wish the MAKS airshow much success. I see Russia as a major technology and energy superpower in the 21st century.

Thirty (30) years ago I met at home the test pilot of the F-14 "Tomcat" that was in the film "Top Gun" that the reporter refers to. It was a troubled time, we watched "Ishi the last Californian Indian" and the US TV press interrupted to state that, in the "hostage crisis" in Tehran, where students tired of Savak, the Shah's "secret police" spying on them there and in the US, reported that "...if the USSR made a move for Iran's border, we would blow up all the F-14s on the ground outside Tehran". The Grumman Corporation, builders of the "Lunar Excursion Module" that landed US astronauts on the Moon 40 years ago, had provided 80 F-14s to Iran and it was reported had a compound with over 3000 of their employees teaching the support staff how to fly and maintain the F-14, a mainstay of the US fleet which had the arm-patch "Anytime, baby" and a small tiger striped cat in gloves in a boxing "ring". The test pilot said, an administrator in the Long Island, New York "Cradle of Aviation" museum there, thought it was the air-to-air missiles that would affect the regional and world "balance of power" since the Russians knew the F-14 very well already. There are still 77 of them there according to the "Washington Post". It would have been strange to see our F-14s fighting one another if then President Carter had decided to use force instead of diplomacy. I am very impressed as an aviation observer and happy to to see that Russian industry is part of the growing global markets in aviation.