Russian Superjet 100 Crashes During Demo Flight, Killing All Aboard 339
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.'"
Re:Competition? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A triumph! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:At Call Center Training (Score:2, Informative)
Most Tea Partiers (like me) hate corporations. It's pretty much why the thing formed in the first place (first to help Ron Paul in 2007, and then to protest the bailout of corporations by Bush).
Sadly the Tea Party Congressmen just voted 71% in favor of the CISPA spying-by-corporations act, so maybe the TP has lost its was over the years. Hijacked by the Republicans.
Re:Repeat Customers? (Score:4, Informative)
Ahh the good old Habsheim Crash, wondered when that would get trotted out.
The Air France pilot of that particular aircraft was too low, too slow and untrained for such a stunt. He flew below the height of surrounding obstacles with his engines at or near idle, and then blamed the spool up time as the engines being "unresponsive". He put the aircraft into a dangerous situation and other people paid for his mistakes with their lives.
The pilot was an idiot, there was nothing wrong with the aircraft that caused that crash. Sure there was irregularities with the handling of the flight recorders afterward, but nothing has ever been proven in that particular conspiracy theory.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Informative)
From what I have read, the descent to 6000ft was made on the prior demo flight as well, as part of the sightseeing - the weather was poor, so they would have wanted to get under the weather to see the sights.
Re:A triumph! (Score:5, Informative)
You're an idiot. [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] and the European Aviation Safety Agency [europa.eu]; 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?
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure where you're sitting but... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents [wikipedia.org]
"About two percent of the manned launch/reentry attempts have killed their crew, with Soyuz and the Shuttle having almost the same death percentage rates."
Looks like it's 2 to 2 on fatal space missions and even money on number of deaths as well.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:2, Informative)
Photo of one of the plane's panels an hour or two prior to the doomed takeoff: http://gallery.me.com/sdolya#102194/20120509_ssjroadshow_382&bgcolor=black
Note the OFF indication on the TAWS TERR button. Can anyone familiar with airliners speak to whether or not that is normal on the ground? If that system wasn't enabled prior to takeoff then a picture of the cause was uploaded before the plane even took off. Looking forward to reading the report on this one when it comes out.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:4, Informative)
The main difference is that Soyuz is a modular system, with the unmanned cargo booster also being part of The same series - most people compare only the manned missions, when the Shuttle has to always fly manned whether the cargo requires it or not.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Informative)
The terrain they chose is basically known for having an inordinately high amount of plane crashes, mostly due to the fact the weather in the area can change very rapidly.
The local newspaper stated that the jet wanted a flight level below the peak of the mountain they impacted, which is generally considered a bad idea if you're a pilot not familiar with the terrain.
(yes, I live in Jakarta)
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure where you got "no lower than 10,000 feet". It should be "no higher than 10,000 feet". You want to increase the cabin pressure closer to sea level. People with health problems can have problems over 5,000 feet or so.
People that sick shouldn't be passengers, nevermind pilots.
A pilot should get down to 10K so she or he doesn't get incapacitated, and then only go lower if safe to do so.
The safety of the flight takes precedence. If it is a choice between going below a minimum safe altitude (given terrain and other factors) and a passenger having a health issue - safety of the flight comes first. If a passenger dies that is sad, but much more tragic if everyone does.
First priority "Fly the plane". Getting to 10K is needed so you can keep doing that. All else is secondary.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, Spirit took three years to move as far as I walked yesterday morning.
I notice in the wiki a mention of one rover going three miles in one year. Which is less than I walk every morning (what can I say, yesterday was special, I went a couple of extra laps around the park).
And it should be noted that both rovers together, didn't quite manage a distance that I could make in a day, walking. Two days, walking with a backpack.
Yah, those rovers did some good work. And lasted amazingly well over the years. But eight years to cover the ground that two astronauts could cover in two or three days (assuming they didn't have something like the Lunar Rover to ferry them around)? A team of six astronauts sent to Mars for a ten month stay would get us more information than we'll get in the next 50 years of sending unmanned rovers (mostly because if a man sees a damp spot on the ground, he can walk over and investigate. If the rover wasn't built to dig around a damp spot on the ground, you need to design a new one and deliver it before you can find out why the ground was damp there...)
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Informative)
One news report stated a farmer saw the plane fly low above him with "the engine" running. It could have been a single engine failure, which should not have been catastrophic. He may have only said "the engine" because he couldn't tell from the sound if it were one or two engines running.
I'm sure the pilots must have known the terrain.
I would suspect the possibility of a loss of cabin pressure. Procedure for that is to put on oxygen masks, and immediately descend.
Some people don't handle the air above 6,800 feet very well.
If their altimeter wasn't accurate, they could have been much higher,and began suffering symptoms of hypoxia faster. The immediate descent could have done exactly what you said, controlled flight into terrain.
I work for one of the major aerospace companies (one of Sukhoi's competitors with this jet, actually), and this post is very uninformed. Nothing in the reports indicate that it was an engine failure, and if so the pilots probably would've raised a distress signal.
It's also pretty much impossible for it to be a loss of cabin pressure. People handle 6,800 feet perfectly fine - in fact, regular flights are pressurised to an equivalent of 8,000 feet, and you don't see people suffering from hypoxia in most regular flights.
As has been mentioned, this was probably a demonstration flight intended to impress the customers. There was a first flight earlier that day which did the same thing, and when they do that, they turn off the ground proximity warnings to avoid constant alarms while they're performing the pass. However reports indicate that the visibility became much worse for the second flight, and if those proximity warnings have been accidentally left off from the first flight earlier in the day, they may have had no warning of a collision with the mountain. Of course, none of these speculations can be certain until the final report has been released. This is a tragic loss, and my condolences go out to the friends and relatives of the passengers and crew.