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:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Much better in the days when the US was using the sturdy Challenger and Columbia...
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, if you actually were trying to imply the Russians weren't as good as space flight as other countries, why, that would just be absurd. You can't possibly mean such a thing. Right?
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:4, Insightful)
Symbolism, romance and sword-rattling are not acceptable answers.
Why not?
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
The initial reports I saw on this stated they requested an immediate descent from 10k feet to 6k feet moments before they disappeared from radar.
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.
Since they were suppose to be out on a 50 minute flight, they should have still been climbing.
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.
We'll learn more from the flight data recorders, when they're recovered and analyzed. It may have been pilot error, equipment malfunction, or both.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:4, Insightful)
It was a demo flight, they are (were) shopping the aircraft around various airlines looking for buyers. The pilots would not be "familiar" with the terrain. This was not a public transport flight, it was a private flight.
These demo flights operate in, lets say, a manner designed to impress the passengers.
A flight down low up an incredibly scenic valley, is one way of impressing your passengers. Miss judging the space needed to get out of that valley, that's not quite so impressive :(
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:4, Insightful)
I would assume the pilot would have familiarized himself with the terrain, since that helps to know where to fly to.
Impressing the passengers ... well ... That was probably lost somewhere between "look at the view" and [smack into the mountain]. It'll probably significantly impede their chances of getting a signed contract, since the signers were on board.
I think that's one of those unspoken rules of business. "Don't kill your customers before they pay."
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Similar to this crash of an Airbus 320 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:4, Insightful)
Symbolism, romance and sword-rattling are not acceptable answers.
Why not?
Because if those things are what you want, you can get them quite effectively from a paperback book.
If you are hyper-rich and want to spend tens of billions of dollars on your own space program, of course, then you are welcome to do it however you like -- but if you are spending other peoples' tax money, then you need to be accountable and spend that money in a wise and cost-effective manner, at the very least. Your sense of adventure does not entitle you to waste their money.
Re:Repeat Customers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, it didn't even put a stain on the program - annual orders for the A320 series (A320 and A321 as follows
1987 58,
1988 116,
1989 146,
1990 300
The Habsheim crash occured in 1988 - no recovery was needed, as no order slump occured.
Controlled flight into fixed terrain (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. Those are good reasons to have astronauts in space. They're just shitty and unacceptable reasons to force other people to pay to have astronauts in space.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait... why exactly do we need to dig a hole on Mars? Because it's *not* there!
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [youtube.com]. 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.
Re:A triumph! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:SCAREBUS! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Probably lost the sale, too! (Score:2, Insightful)
How many jumbo jets planes have been built?
How many shuttles?
How many shuttles exploded on the first few take offs?