Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
That can't be good for sales. If I was buying an airliner, I'd have to pass on this one.
I hope Sukhoi wasn't counting on repeat customers to make their sales figures this year...
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
Looks like Airbus and Boeing will be getting some more customers.
In Russia...plane crashes you
No, just wrong. They took care of that problem by making sure the potential customers were in the plane, as the summary says.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
...Superjet demo's you.
It was apparently raining or overcast, seems likely that the pilots flew into the mountain while attempting a sightseeing flyby. That's a completely different story than if there was a mechanical malfunction. Of course, they'll lose sales either way.
No In Soviet Russia Mountain crashes into you!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
"Are you sure you don't want to buy our planes? Very well. If we have no further business, our aircraft is now on its final descent. Don't bother fastening your seat belts."
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
on the other hand, if they were being forced to watch an in-flight Jennifer Aniston movie, then it's just merciful...
In the 90's they told us that if a customer has a good experience with your company he will generally not tell anyone, but if he has a bad experience with your company he'll tell at least 10 other people. They failed to cover the "Your product resulted in their death" case, though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Reminds me of the braindead comments we saw here in Indiana after last year's State Fair stage collapse when it was revealed that no one had to inspect the stage rigging.
My favorite was the one that said "why does it matter if some guy inspects the rigging." Well, for one thing it's not "some guy" but someone that has education and experience with such engineering problems. Secondly it's because people could die if it is wrong. Even when given a practical demonstration people are so ideologically motivated that they can't see why it should be done. You should of seen that idiot Mitch "fuck all regulations" Daniels backtrack when this was revealed and and people wondered why common sense wasn't followed and someone with experience didn't look over the setup.
It won't just dampen interest it will probably kill it since it is Sukhoi's first commercial aircraft venture.
I'll wait however for the report on what caused the crash, but leaving it to the probabilities it may have been pilot error.
That goes not without saying that the design of this new aircraft could have contributed to a lack of understanding of the
flight characteristics of the plane or it could have just been a piece of shit to begin with.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The entire country is corrupt, decrepit and dysfunctional, not just Putin's much vaunted "national champions".
The corrupt little dictator knows that the country he presides over is falling over. Which is why he's so busy turkey-slapping anybody who looks like they could ever be a friend of Russia.
With another twelve years of this thug, Russia is fucked.
This is one of the times you should really read the article, so you don't jump to conclusions.
It was a demostration flight, not a test flight. The plane had been thoroughly vetted. So let's hold off until the investigation finds if it's plane or human error. It had decended to 1800m near the 2200m Mount Salek. We don't know if sensors failed, we don't know if the pilot got disoriented, and we don't know if there was a mechanical failure. We just don't know yet. So don't jump and blame the engineering.
The captain had lot's of experience, and flew the Superjet on its maiden journey back in 2008.
Those onboard were: "journalists and businessmen, eight Russians, including embassy officials, pilots and technicians, two Italians, one French citizen and one American"
This is a very sad situation, and I can't imagine what's on the mind of everyone involved. 37 people died, and no jokes will be coming from me. RIP.
Maybe one of them did not get off? :)
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I'm not sure where you've been, but America has not been concerned about Russia for about 20 years.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
if the pilot is dead, then it is always pilot error. He cant defend himself, or point to any incorrect training or manuals or flight characteristics. PR will always point at the dead guy in these cases, until the same thing happens multiple times, or blame can be pinned on somebody outside of the company like in the valuejet crash.
This crash has the hallmark of what is called "controlled flight into terrain", which means the plane may have been working fine, but the pilots did not know accurately enough where they were. The impact seems to have been near a mountain peak. It might have meant that they noticed this too late and were trying to climb. This is speculation, but these types of accidents have occurred before.
So why was he so low in the first place? I read somewhere else that the pilot had requested a lower altitude from air traffic control shortly before the crash (from 21,000 to 8,000). This might have indicated he was taking the plane down, into what he may have thought was better weather, possibly for some visual sight seeing to show off the plane. Some call this "sniffing for the ground" - not the best thing sometimes, especially with 50 potential customers abord and on a sales flight. Again I am speculating a bit here, but the investigation will be interesting. Rest in peace to all.
Don't worry, they'll make up for it by selling more weapons to North Korea.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
You're an idiot. The plane was certified by numerous agencies, and has been flying commercially since April of 2011.
It is certified as meeting the relevant airworthiness and safety requirements by the Interstate Aviation Committee and the European Aviation Safety Agency; The EASA certification is more or less identical in procedure and requirement to our own FAA requirements.
This has nothing to do with "insufficient safety regulations and inspection" in Russia, the plane passed all the same certifications it would need to pass here in the USA, and in fact, the certificate that was awarded by EASA may very well be valid in the US, as there is some reciprocity in these certification processes.
Initial reports suggest that it was CFIT, and they flew right into the side of the mountain; unless you've got access to the black box already, maybe you should hold off on hollow political posturing until an understanding can be reached as to what actually happened?
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.
That's why everybody loves captain sully sullenberger. Dude landed his craft, so they couldn't pin pilot error on him.
How many can I sign you up for?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Wow, go back to the Cold War and relive it for old times sake? The U.S. stopped caring about Russia when the Berlin Wall came down, the year 1989. Now the only concern with Russia is how far Putin will go to become Fuehrer for Life. If he starts sporting a cheesey small mustache. then we'll have to take him seriously.
That's rubbish. The fly by wire system didn't prevent anything. The engines actually spooled up quicker than the numbers in the book said they should. The problem is basically the crew didn't add power until the tail was already dragging through the tree tops (which added a tremendous amount of drag, as well as distorting and damaging the aerodynamic tail surfaces). Any airliner of that size, fly by wire or not, would have crashed doing what that crew did - unless it was fitted with JATO rockets.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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
Boeing is doing the same thing with their 787 Dream Tour: They outfitted a test aircraft with a semi-realistic interior to fly around customers, suppliers and media. It is not a full production model...the plane still wears "Experimental" badges warning that it does not meet federal safety regulations and many of the seats are not usable as they are not certified for whatever reason. That said, when I flew it, I was completely confident that Boeing wouldn't do any hot dogging to impress us, and they didn't. It wasn't a sightseeing trip, they let the passengers concentrate on the plane.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Lev Andropov: It's stuck, yes?
Watts: Back off! You don't know the components!
Lev Andropov: [annoyed] Components. American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!
Funny, I didn't realize that the European Aviation Safety Agency was a Russian regulatory agency. Or is it that Russians are so corrupt that they subverted the Europeans as well and just purchased a certification? And if that's the case, what point having regulatory agencies at all, if they're so easily subverted and worked around?
Your point would have been a real zinger, if it was the case that this Sukhoi was flying without certification or inspection. But since it received the same certifications and inspections that any Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, etc. plane must pass, it sort of makes you look like an idiot. Because it did go under "anywhere near the scrutiny a Euro or American one does," because it went through *the exact same scrutiny.*
Safety systems don't trump physics and performance limitations, friend. Nor do they replace a pilot's experience and familiarity with the controls and operating characteristics of the aircraft. If your terrain warning goes off, it doesn't do much good if you don't have time or distance to correct your course. Given that they had descended to around 6000 feet, and the mountain is about 7000 feet, it's quite possible that they couldn't pull up in time. It's also possible that (like the recent cruise ship accident off the coast of Italy) the pilot was "showing off" and got a little too close to something he shouldn't have. It's also possible that the pilot responded improperly to the warnings he was given (i.e., Air France 447 which crashed into the Atlantic), or responded too slowly, or that he was given conflicting or bad warnings by a malfunctioning instrument.
There's dozens of possible explanations for how a plane can crash - assuming that it's "hurr durr no inspections" when all the evidence available suggests that the plane underwent the same exact safety and regulatory review (by the EASA) that any other aircraft in service did is simply obnoxious political posturing in a (vain) effort to make yourself look clever.
If you're at 1000 meters, traveling forward at a rate of 100 k/h, and you can rise 10 meters per second, how far away from the ridge (or, how many seconds before you'd reach the ridge) do you need to begin climbing to clear a ridge in your flight path that is 1500 meters tall? Substitute in whatever numbers you please to accurately reflect performance characteristics of the aircraft, flying conditions, altitudes, and actual speeds, and there's still a "right answer" to this question, and any answer that's *shorter* than the right answer will end in a sudden violent stop.
Safety mechanisms don't provide you with a magical "suspend physics" capability. They are designed to inform the pilot(s) of errors, risks, and potential hazards, but they do not obviate the need for the pilots to be capable, familiar with and aware of the warning systems of the aircraft, and respond to them in a timely fashion.
Safety mechanisms cannot magically impart energy into the craft. Nor should they take automatic corrective action, because what if the sensors are wrong?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Study your history. No way Putin will be a 'Fuehrer', he will be 'Fearless leader'!
Also bushy 'stash, 'man of steal' style.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If I got on one of those flights I would complain if they skipped the barrel roll.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Let's perform a little experiment. Go get a grant for a couple hundred grand. Don't worry, I'll wait.
Next, go out and buy the most modern automobile you can, with as many safety features as you can find. Only restrictions are "must be street-legal" and "must be available to the general public". No military tanks, no experimental Google self-driving cars, nothing like that.
Now get in, find yourself a nice bit of highway. Get up to 60mph/100kmph or so, standard "cruising speed".
Now point yourself straight at the nearest immovable object. A nice, big tree, or perhaps a brick wall.
If your car didn't magically seize control of the vehicle, apply the brakes and take evasive action as necessary, I suppose it must not have had "sufficient safety mechanisms". But, last I checked, "the pilots tried to turn the airplane into a dirtplane" is not something a safety feature can always stop. A good warning system can alert the pilots that they're about to hit a mountain, but even then, the pilots may not have had time to respond, or may not have heeded the warning.
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/newsletter/superjet-disappears-south-of-jakarta-notes-from-an-aviation-consultant/517078
Notes from an aviation consultant on the area in question and why it seemed like poor planning on the Russian crew's part.
There is no sig...
Easily. As long as there are humans doing the flying and not a computer they can fly into the mountain just by pointing the plane there. Sure - if the safety features are working "terrain, terrain, pull up, pull up" will sound constantly in the cockpit but that will not *prevent* you from flying into terrain if you choose to ignore those warnings for some reason.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19142_5-soviet-space-programs-that-prove-russia-was-insane.html
That's because Americans don't value education and experience, and think they're worthless.
Handling emergencies is the most difficult part of being a pilot. Lots of people can figure out how to operate an aircraft in ideal conditions, it's when things go wrong and you have seconds or less to react properly when you find out who's really a good pilot and who isn't. Sully proved himself; I doubt most pilots are as skilled. Obviously, the "test pilots" flying this Superjet weren't.
Never depend on the engines and never fly in such a way that you'll die if they fail. Always keep an emergency landing area in sight and in range. Engines can fail at anytime and you can be a involuntary glider.
They teach this stuff in the USA to private pilots, and it is common knowledge on the web.
They didn't even fail, it just took too long for the pilot to get the power he needed, and should never have needed in the first place
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
"Russia, a land free of job killing market strangling regulation"
You clearly have no clue about Russia.
We'll take the house. Honey, the chances of another plane hitting this house are astronomical. It's been pre-disastered. We're going to be safe here
AA Flight 587 - the one where the vertical tail fin failed well in excess of its certificated ultimate load (150% maximum load, and maximum load should never be reached in an aircrafts life anyway)? I always choose to fly on aircraft that match or exceed safety requirements.
AF Flight 447 - the one where three crew members couldn't get laid in a womens prison while holding a handful of pardons? You can believe all the hatchet jobs you want, but the Airbus FBW system was not at issue in this one, and its amusing that all of the anti-Airbus stories citing the sidestick as a central issue in this point totally ignore the almost identical crashes that involved Boeing 727 and 767s (crews managed to fully stall the aircraft while completely overlooking the issue at hand), and those have standard central yokes as control.
Do you want me to cite a long list of Boeing design faults and issues? The 737 rudder hard over events that Boeing denied for a decade, before the NTSB eventually found a major issue with the tail hydraulics? The 747 cargo door designs which Boeing knew to be a design fault, but didn't do anything until people died? The 737s with corrosion issues?
If you are going to troll, do it with some actually decent facts.
The engines actually spooled up quicker than the numbers in the book said they should.
They may have developed thrust faster than book, but they also did not respond to throttle input immediately. A delay in developing thrust is to be expected, but when combined with the engines not even responding to the throttle input, the delay is compounded.
The problem is basically the crew didn't add power until the tail was already dragging through the tree tops
That doesn't make any sense at all. Why would the pilots delay adding power when they were already past the end of the runway they were buzzing? And to wait another quarter of a mile until they were in the trees? Unthinkable.
If this was pilot error, then why was the pilot so enthusiastic to assist in the investigation?
There are plenty of pilot error crashes. In fact, the majority of crashes are pilot error. In this case, the pilot made some mistakes, but they would not have been fatal if the plane had cooperated.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'm afraid that the evidence in the investigation does not support any assertion that the engines failed to respond, they responded immediately to the throttle commands.
The common misapprehension that the engines failed to respond comes from an Airbus OEB notice that was issued in the month prior to the crash, but all the data recorded shows no such delay and the OEB was not applicable in this case.
The pilot just reacted far too slowly than he should.
Or you could send them with the supplies and equipment to create a beachhead "colony" to refuel the ship. It wouldn't take much as long as we made use of the local resources, which at a minimum include lots of sand for construction (just need a binder), all the 95% pure atmospheric CO2 you could want (with bonus 3% nitrogen!), and plenty of water ice at the poles.
So all you'd need is some binding agent that will work with the local sand, an inflatable mold or two that you can cover with "concrete" to create strong airtight structures (bury them in additional dirt to achieve your desired level of radiation shielding), a few inflatable greenhouses plus seeds for shade-loving crops, and a small nuclear reactor to power your water-cracking plant to create fuel for the return trip. It might take 5-10 years to refuel, but if you're looking at nearly a year in a tin can both ways that's not such a bad deal.
So for less than the cost of a straightforward there-and-back round trip you've got 5-10 years of on-site research, infrastructure for ongoing missions to Mars and beyond, experience creating a self-sufficient offworld colony in what is actually a pretty hospitable place, and your explorers still probably get to return home.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This is the second time I have submitted an article for Slashdot that is rejected and later appears on the frontpage with lots of activity. Fully 12 hours previous to Prokur's post, I submitted my own. This is further proof that Slashdot is totally random with regard to timeliness. I'm tiring of the lack of respect...
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
That seems to be the message of every Tom Clancy novel :(
Some little hitler with mid points didn't like basic facts, eh? Go read the accident report if you don't believe me....
Am I the only person noticing how the crash / incident amounts for fly-by-wire aircraft seems to be gradually increasing over such a short timespan?