Mitsubishi is expecting more comfortable regional flights on the new "SpaceJet"

Mitsubishi Aircraft is preparing to launch the first airliners made in Japan in more than half a century: the SpaceJet.

The Japanese aircraft manufacturer, a division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, now needs regulators and customers to embark.

Before the Paris Air Show, Mitsubishi unveiled Thursday the new brand retrofuturist and presented plans to ensure that the program – long suffering from production delays – is finally launched.

He modified the design of the smaller aircraft in the Mitsubishi Regional Jet family to extend the cabin and reduce wing size. And he recently started the test flights for the largest, the SpaceJet M90 (or MRJ90) with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau in Washington State, where he recently opened a new headquarters in the United States.

The 88-seat M90 has a range of approximately 1,300 miles, about the distance between New York and Miami.

The most fuel-efficient aircraft compared to previous models are part of a wave of smaller aircraft designs than the single-aisle Boeing and Airbus aircraft that dominate air travel and can carry from 150 to over 200 passengers .

These planes come with large hanging trash cans, larger seats, and larger cabs than some of the older, smaller, regional planes that some flyers fear.

Among the Mitsubishi M90 customers he plans to deliver in 2020 are Japan's All Nippon Airways (ANA) and SkyWest, a North American regional carrier, including United Airlines, American and Delta.

But if Mitsubishi wants to penetrate the regional jet market in North America, size matters.

This is explained by the US pilot union rules that limit the number of seats on regional jets to 76 and limit take-off weight, so that more flights are not outsourced from major carriers to large companies. regional airlines, where the salary of the crew is lower.

Mitsubishi therefore offers a reduced version of the aircraft, the SpaceJet M100, to meet these rules. He will make his debut inside the plane at the Paris Air Show.

"In the US market, the aircraft is optimized to comply with the reach clause in the three-class cabin configuration of 65 to 76 seats," Mitsubishi Aircraft said in a statement released on Thursday.

The rebranding is at a turning point for the regional jet industry.

Mitsubishi reportedly plans to resume regional jet operations from its Canadian competitor Bombardier, giving the Japanese automaker access to a vast network of aftermarket services.

Last year, Airbus took majority control of Bombardier's C-Series program and renamed the A220 aircraft. And Boeing is in the process of resuming the Embraer commercial jet business, based in Brazil.