Incident of the week #17

Sometimes when a test/demo flight is being made, something terrible happens, perhaps due to the pressure from the business or the scenic side, that leads to the complete lost of the aircraft and souls on board.

This happened this week to a Sukhoi Superjet 95 departing and arriving from Jakarta (Indonesia). The demonstration flight was the second done that day and was carrying 37 passengers who were mostly potential buyers, 3 pilots, 3 flight attendants and 2 Sukhoi officials. About 30 minutes into the flight, while the aircraft was flying over Mount Salak, radio contact was lost. The crew had requested to descent to 6,000 feet and was cleared to do so by ATC, but after that no more communication was established. Mind you, Mount Salak is over 7,200 feet high.. The aircraft did not turn up to Jakarta or any other airports in the area and was "lost" for one whole day. It was then only found the next day while helicopters were searching the Mount Salak area.

Just looking at the massive deforestation, one can deduct how huge the impact was. And also confirm how steep the slop is, which are making the rescue and recovery work very difficult. In fact, first attempts to set rescuers down by helicopters failed. Only two days after the accident, rescuers were able to reach the crash site. Here you find a very nice blog entry about that. It´s worth reading it, and the pictures speak to itself.  Accessing the crash site from the air is impossible so about 1353 rescuers were sent in the field and with the help of ladders and ropes descended from the top of the cliff towards the the crash site. With the crash site found it had been confirmed that the plane had broken into small pieces after hitting the side of the mountain and there were no chance anyone had survived. So far 18 bodies have been recovered but DNA sample from their families must be provided in order to be able to identify them.

The precipitous terrain and thick fog had made it difficult for rescuers to collect the bodies.

The black boxes haven´t been found yet but an investigation has now been open. The pilots were experienced and the aircraft had done the same demo flight on the morning that same day, so it´s still early to make any conclusions for the reason of the crash. Perhaps they were trying to do a low fly to impress the potential buyers through the mountains and for some reason they didn´t see that cliff with enough anticipation due to a isolated cloud near the cliff or some type of distraction. Or perhaps they were flying over a cloud layer and requested a descent to 6,000 feet, in order to fly below that layer and have a view of the landscape, but they didn´t realise that the mountain was below them, maybe due to spacial disorientation which could have been generated by, again, some type of distraction. One thing´s for sure, and that we have learnt from past crashes history; there must have been not one single thing, but a lot of factors that lead to this accident. Looking at this photos, found from the debris, that were taken prior to and during the flight, showing the last moments of the crew and passengers makes anyone sad and thoughtful. I hope their families can find some peace.