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Russian Superjet 100 Crashes During Demo Flight, Killing All Aboard
First time accepted submitter Prokur writes "A brand new Russian Sukhoi Superjet 100 airliner on a demonstration flight with 37 passengers (mostly future clients and journalists) and 8 Russian crew members on board went missing after it took off from an airport in Jakarta. After an extensive search, rescuers concluded, based on the widespread debris field on the side of a ridge, that the aircraft directly impacted the rocky side of Mount Salak and there was 'no chance of survival.'"
Depends on why it crashed - at the moment it looks like Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT).
Also, crashes early on doesn't necessarily mean the death of the program, the Airbus A330 suffered a crash during its development, but has gone on to sell over 1,000 examples since.
Right. Much better in the days when the US was using the sturdy Challenger and Columbia...
== Jez ==
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Actually, no; we count on people who designed a rocket launcher the proper way (read: under pressure during the cold war) many years ago, and nowadays they don't know how to do it anymore. This is one of the reasons why the modifications to the Soyuz rocket launcher were kept to a strict minimum before launching it from Kourou: they wanted to keep as much as possible the old design that we know worked quite well.
Except that for the mass of astronauts + a crew cabin + life support for a year + fuel to get all of the above back to Earth, you could send up an entire robotic demolition crew complete with RTGs to power them for decades.
I'm not against manned space exploration, but until we have better engine technology it will be a huge waste of resources.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I doubt the pilots did knew the terrain that well. They were Russian pilots demoing a jet in a foreign country, so it would not have been an area they fly over regularly. They were touring.
I believe they were trying to show off, and here's why I think that. One of the news sites had a video (looked like Google Earth) showing where the plane took off, and where it crashed. The mountain it crashed into is this really isolated and abrupt thing sticking way up out of lower elevation terrain. It was very clear from that imagery that the plane took off and made a bee line for those scenic mountains for impressive views for those on board. I think the pilot tried to do a close fly by and did not realize just how steep that mountain was (it is practically vertical where the plane impacted).
Again, if you look at the topography, it is clear that if the plane had some sort of engine trouble, especially up at 10,000 feet, there was much lower elevation land they could have easily headed toward instead of happening to drop on that isolated mountain.
Remember, this was flying around for the sake of showing off a plane - a sightseeing tour that they wanted those on board to have a memorable impression of. Thus they would have headed towards something like that mountain to give the passengers something more interesting to look at than boring cloud tops or flat land.
Better known as 318230.
Nope, sorry, your explanation is the standard one and it's wrong - the FBW system didn't prevent anything, the pilot had the engines at a far too low power setting and it takes time for any jet engine to spool up from that point. The pilot should have had the engines at a high power setting (TOGA) and he should have been using aerodynamic devices to keep the speed at the level he wanted it - he didn't, he just throttled back the engines, which you should never do in that situation.
The pilot was correctly blamed for that one.
It is likely that the primary cause of this was pilot error and what we have is controlled flight into fixed terrain. Demonstration flights are designed to wow the prospective customers and it seems likely that they where attempting to do a bit of sightseeing. After all, commercial aviation is usually boring because you are spending hours and hours going straight and level with only takeoff and landing being somewhat interesting. They where taking the local sightseeing tour to spice things up a bit, which is why they requested the lower altitude. You don't go lower without an emergency, unless you intend to land or look at something, and by all the accounts I've heard there was no emergency declared and there are few places to land around there.
The pilot may have been a great test pilot with lots of time in the aircraft he was flying, but I seriously doubt he has a lot of experience with the local terrain and weather conditions. Flying 500' from the tops of mountains can be a difficult thing on a clear day, but you add the tropical rains, possible winds driving air over the mountains and the risks go up. Bush pilots avoid these situations in much slower aircraft because it is too easy to run out of room faster than you can turn around or climb, this was a much faster less maneuverable aircraft than a C208 or Caravan. Further you have the issue of turbulence, up and down drafts that are common issues with mountain flying. These things can make maintaining altitude unexpectedly difficult when trying to maneuver. Smart pilots avoid unnecessary risks, this guy didn't because he was trying to sell airplanes. His requested altitude was ONLY 500' above the existing terrain in limited visibility, I'm pretty much going to call this pilot irresponsible for taking such risks.
It is possible a mechanical problem may have contributed to this, but unless we are talking about a MAJOR mechanical issue that made the aircraft totally un-flyable (an extremely rare situation), the primary cause of this accident is surely going to be pilot error. Even in the face of a major mechanical failure they are going to fault him for 1. flying too low , 2. Choosing to fly around dangerous terrain, 3. Choosing to fly in limited visibility where he had to maintain visual orientation to remain safe.
Chances are we have yet again another case of human error, stemming from lack of wise judgement. But that is no surprise because this is the most common killer in aviation with mechanical failure being order of magnitudes less likely.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Dear sir, what you need to do is not go to Mars. What you need to do is ask your family what they think about the idea. And then get your head examined. Perhaps in reverse order.
It's not up to us to judge you, though. Lots of people do really stupid things that eventually get them killed, like this guy. I personally think you have a responsibility towards your daughters, and to some extent also towards your wife, but hey, people get divorced and move to another continent. So it's not as if losing a father is unheard of.