Russian Plane Disappears During Demo Flight

[Kip Powick]

Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) -- Russia's newest civilian airliner disappeared Wednesday from radar screens during a demonstration flight in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, state-run RIA Novosti news service reported.

There were 44 passengers on board.

The pilots requested permission to descend from 10,000 feet to 6,000 feet, air traffic controllers said. After that, all radio contact was lost.

The plane began making its descent but vanished from radar screens at 6,200 feet in a mountainous area.

By the time the plane was due to return it should have burned up its fuel, RIA Novosti said.

The Sukhoi Superjet-100 airplane arrived in Jakarta as part of a demonstration tour of six Asian countries. It had been to Myanmar, Pakistan and Kazakhstan, and was due to visit Laos and Vietnam after Indonesia, RIA Novosti said.

Sukhoi manufactures military aircraft and is known especially for its fighter jets. Its civilian aircraft is narrow-bodied with a dual-class cabin that can transport 100 passengers over regional routes.

[Don Hudson]

CFIT - http://avherald.com/h?article=44f464f7&opt=0

Of particular note are a series of photographs by Sergi Dolya, a popular Russian blogger who has been photographing the Sukhoi world sales trip. They can be found here.

Don

[Kip Powick]

Looks like it impacted the cliff and then slid backwards down the cliff...or stalled, hit the ground and then slid, cockpit forward down the cliff as there appears to be no damage to the trees etc. at the top of the ridge..

Not a pretty sight.

[J.O.]

Don, was Sergei Dolya a passenger on the accident flight? His photographs are beautiful and it's difficult to accept that those happy crew members and company officials shown in his pictures have died so tragically.

[Kip Powick]

Don, was Sergei Dolya a passenger on the accident flight? His photographs are beautiful and it's difficult to accept that those happy crew members and company officials shown in his pictures have died so tragically.

He was not on the flight but two of his employees were. He has tried to call his employees by "tweeting" them but has had no reply.

[conehead]

Beautiful pictures. I see evidence of a bird-strike in slide #348.

[Kip Powick]

MOUNT SALAK, INDONESIA—A rescue team found several bodies but no survivors on Thursday in the wreckage of a Russian plane that crashed into a mountain in Indonesia during an exhibition flight with 45 people on board.

Russia said it would take part in the investigation of the crash of its first all-new passenger jet since the fall of the Soviet Union, a Superjet 100 aircraft that went missing on Wednesday about 60 km south of Jakarta.

It was carrying Indonesians including journalists and businessmen, eight Russians including embassy officials, pilots and technicians, as well as two Italians, one French citizen and one American, said Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk, the head of Sukhoi Civil Aircraft.

“We haven't found survivors,” Gagah Prakoso, spokesman of the search and rescue team, told Indonesia's Metro TV.

Radio contact with the aircraft was lost at about 0800 GMT on Wednesday after it descended to 6,000 feet near Mount Salak, which rises to 7,254 feet above sea level, a rescue official said.

A rescue helicopter spotted debris on the side of the dormant Mount Salak volcano on Thursday, sending teams on a trek across steep and heavily forested terrain to reach the site.

A picture taken from the helicopter appeared to show that the plane hit the top of a wall of rock. Small pieces of white debris could be seen scattered down an exposed stretch of cliff.

The cause of the crash was not known.

“The airplane crashed at the edge of Salak mountain ... An investigation must be done immediately and thoroughly,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said.

President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian representatives to take part in the investigation, offering his “profound condolences” in a statement on the Kremlin's website.

A senior Russian official suggested the crash was caused by pilot error rather than a technical failure. The plane was Russia's flagship jet and Moscow will hope the crash will not reduce confidence in its civilian aircraft industry.

“Experts are saying that the plane has been working impeccably well and that possibly it was human error,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters while travelling with Putin in Nizhny Tagil in Russia's Ural mountains.

He called the superjet a “reliable, competitive machine.”

Superjet International, the Italian-led venture responsible for marketing the plane to the West, said on its website that Sukhoi's chief civil test pilot Alexander Yablontsev and his co-pilot Alexander Kochetkov had been flying the plane.Yablontsev had accumulated 10,000 flight hours and commanded the Superjet on its maiden flight in 2008.The aircraft made two demonstration flights on Wednesday.

It returned to Halim Perdanakusuma airport, east of Jakarta, after the first flight where some people got off because it was time for Muslim prayers and were left behind, according to Sunaryo from Sukhoi's Indonesian agent PT Trimarga Rekatama. Others who had not planned to fly got on board.

The crash was 45 years after a Dutch-built Fokker F-27 flew into a hill in the Philippines on a promotional sortie due to probable pilot error, said the Flight Safety Foundation.

“There have been losses on demonstration flights and they are not generally the fault of the airplane. But without more information it is impossible to know the circumstances here,” said Paul Hayes, safety director at aviation consultancy Ascend.Sukhoi, which has orders for 170 planes worldwide, plans to produce up to 1,000 Superjets, primarily for foreign markets.

It aimed to sell 42 planes to Indonesia, which is seeing a fast-expanding aviation market that aims to tap travel by a growing middle class in the world's fourth-most populous nation.

Indonesia's Sky Aviation signed a commitment last August to buy 12 Sukhoi Superjet 100s.

“Some of our staff were in the plane. We are waiting for the investigation by the authorities, whether it's human error or plane issues,” said Sutito Zainudin, general manager marketing of PT Sky Aviation.

“We will take further action about the Sukhoi (purchase) after the investigation is completed,” Zainudin said. A state-run newspaper in Vietnam said Laos was the first country in Southeast Asia to have placed an order for the aircraft.

The jet was developed with Western design advice and technology from companies including Italy's Finmeccanica , as well as avionics and engine equipment from French aerospace firms Thales and Safran.Built in a converted corner of a Sukhoi fighter factory in Siberia, the Superjet was unveiled in 2007 as part of a drive to restore pride in Russia's aviation industry, but it ran into a series of development delays.The Superjet 100, with a capacity of 68-103 passengers, is in service with Russia's Aeroflot and Armenian carrier Armavia and is half way through a 15,500-km, six-nation Asian tour to try to drum up more international customers.

[J.O.]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it didn't take long for some government official to throw the dead crew under a bus in the name of selling airplanes. It's not like its the first time.

[Seeker]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it didn't take long for some government official to throw the dead crew under a bus in the name of selling airplanes. It's not like its the first time.

Are you referring to this quote:

“Experts are saying that the plane has been working impeccably well and that possibly it was human error,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters while travelling with Putin in Nizhny Tagil in Russia's Ural mountains. He called the superjet a “reliable, competitive machine.”

That actually sounds pretty reasonable to me. As does this:

“There have been losses on demonstration flights and they are not generally the fault of the airplane. But without more information it is impossible to know the circumstances here,” said Paul Hayes, safety director at aviation consultancy Ascend.

[J.O.]

Actually, I was referring to this.

A senior Russian official suggested the crash was caused by pilot error rather than a technical failure. The plane was Russia's flagship jet and Moscow will hope the crash will not reduce confidence in its civilian aircraft industry.

“Experts are saying that the plane has been working impeccably well and that possibly it was human error,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters while travelling with Putin in Nizhny Tagil in Russia's Ural mountains.

He called the superjet a “reliable, competitive machine.”

[Seeker]

The first sentence is not a quote, it's the interpretation of the reporter. The actual quote from the government official sounds quite reasonable, especially if you consider that it might be from a person who's first language isn't english; “experts are saying that the plane has been working impeccably well and that possibly it was human error”.

[deicer]

Looking at the pictures on AvHerald, it appears that he was trying to pass between two mountain peaks and misjudged the ridge.

Could this be just another case where the last words on the CVR were 'Смотреть это!' ?

So unfortunate.....

[CAT3DUAL]

To early to speculate, but, from personal experience with working with Russian and former east block pilots. A bigger bunch of cowboys you will not find. The things I've seen done with AN12 and 24's, Africa and Russia are filled with smoking holes flown by east block guys, they play hard, they drink hard and they fly crazy. Just say'in,

[Don Hudson]

I think the accident site is located at 6° 42'45.12"S, 106° 44'7.00"E, up the north-south blind canyon, on a south-south-west track.

Given that at the altitude they struck the ridge at you can't turn right and certainly not left, I suspect they didn't know they were up a canyon and perhaps thought they were around the south side of Mt. Salak, continuting "the tour"; -they weren't trying to clear a ridge because they didn't expect it or the cliff they hit - that means that part of the mountain was obscured, possibly in cloud, (I note from the photographs of the site that visibility in the distance is not that good possibly due to high humidity/mist in such a climate). That said, we obviously need to know what the TAWS was doing and what the crew was saying/doing. There are some reasons, (limited database, turned off so as not to "ruin" the sightseeing ride), to believe that it didn't function as intended. The found-not found CVR/DFDR will be of critical importance. Some say the data will never be seen. Clearly, there are lots of pressures and economic/political reasons for and against telling the truth. We'll see what Indonesia, the Russians and other ICAO countries who have a right to the investigation as per Annex 13, say and do in the coming months.

Don

[DEFCON]

It would appear, the Russians are suggesting the US is responsible due to their electronic interference activities.

http://www.eutimes.net/2012/06/us-downed-russia-jets-flight-data-recorder-found/

[Don Hudson]

They have both recorders now.

Don

[Don Hudson]

Preliminary Report now out.

[AME]

Given they were cleared to 6000ft and impacted the ridge at 6000ft and were so close to making it over had they had even a second or two to react they might have made it. Judging by the photo they probably never even had time to register what was about to happen.

[Don Hudson]

The Interim Report does not mention the TAWS but I'll bet it wasn't functioning due to lack of database information. TAWS (or EGPWS, same thing, but not the same as T2CAS) provides a 60 second soft warning and a 30 second hard warning which is plenty of time for the crew to react. Mind you, an Air Blue crew flew a perfectly serviceable A321 into a cliff-side north of Islamabad airfield while doing a circling approach, with the TAWS blaring away...

[Don Hudson]

Final Report.

The PF and PM were chatting and distracted in an orbit north of Salak and didn't keep the bank on necessary to continue the orbit. They descended to FL60 south of the original orbit and while gently turning to the right flew up the valley on the NE side of Salak. They heard several TAWS "Terrain Ahead, Pull UP" warnings and "Gear Not Down" warnings and the RA was reducing but they turned off the TAWS warnings, assuming a database error.