TOKYO: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. said Friday that it will freeze its project to develop and commercialize Japan’s first domestically developed small passenger jet.

The project to develop the Mitsubishi SpaceJet has already been delayed repeatedly. In addition, aircraft demand is unlikely to recover anytime soon as the coronavirus pandemic has reduced air passenger traffic.

Mitsubishi Heavy said it will “temporarily pause” the SpaceJet development program, slashing investment but continuing work to obtain a type certificate from the transport ministry, needed to put the SpaceJet into commercial use.

The company will wait until the economy recovers before resuming full-fledged development.

The SpaceJet project, which started in 2008, is the first attempt by Japan to develop a passenger aircraft from scratch since the government-led development of the YS-11 small passenger plane in the 1960s.

But Mitsubishi Heavy has struggled due to the lack of experience and expertise in the field of passenger aircraft development.

It has postponed the first delivery of the plane, initially slated for 2013, six times. Meanwhile, the development cost for the plane has ballooned to some 1 trillion yen.

JIJI Press