Mitsubishi Aircraft's New 90-Seat Commercial Jet

By HirokoI Tabuchi - New York Times - As a small boy, Teruaki Kawai watched wide-eyed as American DC-3 turbojets took off and landed at a small airport across an inlet from his home on the Hiroshima coast.

Japan’s golden era of aviation that culminated with the feared and respected Mitsubishi Zero fighter planes had ended a decade earlier along with World War II. Banned from making planes by American occupiers after the war, then allowed to make only parts for American military jets, Japan’s aircraft industry was a shadow of its former self.

If all goes well this year, Mr. Kawai, now 65 and president of the Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation, will preside over Japan’s biggest aviation comeback since the war. In late 2013, the company plans the first flight of its Mitsubishi Regional Jet, a sleek, 90-seat commercial plane that is Japan’s bid to break into the industry’s big leagues after almost 70 years.

“For decades, we were confined to supplying parts for other passenger jets. But we’re finally heading into new territory,” Mr. Kawai said in a recent interview at Mitsubishi Aircraft’s Tokyo office.

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