Suspicions Grow About ‘Lack of Seriousness’ on Sukhoi Demo Flight

Sergei Dolya

It was supposed to be a 40-minute demonstration flight showcasing what was meant to be the pride of Russia’s civil aviation industry before local airline officials and journalists.

But some 20 minutes into the flight, the veteran pilot, Alexander Yablontsev, requested permission to descend more than a kilometer in altitude to 2,000 meters, reportedly to avoid a patch of bad weather ahead.

Aviation experts, both local and international, agree that it was an odd decision, saying that normally a plane is supposed to climb up and over a storm system instead of flying under it.

“We suspect that the pilot was trying to show what the plane could do,” Herry Bakti, the Transportation Ministry’s direction general of aviation, said on Sunday.

It proved to be the wrong decision as the plane crashed into Mount Salak, a dormant volcano some 80 kilometers south of Jakarta. The rock face into which the jet slammed stood 200 meters higher than the plane’s altitude at the time.

Early on, officials said the chance of finding any survivors among the 45 people on board the Sukhoi Superjet 100 was slim. As the recovery effort entered its 10th day on Friday, that fear seemed to be confirmed as officials called off the operation.

Yablontsev had been taking the jet on a road show of six Asian countries, luring potential buyers in Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Burma before showcasing it in Indonesia. Sukhoi said earlier that the plane that crashed was a replacement after the previous aircraft broke down in Pakistan and had to be sent back to Moscow because of engine problems.

There is now speculation that there were also problems with the replacement jet because the plane’s warning system reportedly failed to go off as it approached the mountain. The plane’s emergency beacon, meant to send rescuers signals in the event of a crash, also failed to deploy.

Russia had high hopes that the plane would jump-start the country’s aviation industry, in decline since the fall of the Soviet Union. It had also been criticized for its poor air safety record, with more than 100 people killed last year alone in at least five plane crashes.

Pictures posted by Russian blogger Sergei Dolya and taken on board the Superjet’s earlier flight that fateful day only fueled suspicions that human error may have played a crucial role in the Indonesian crash. One photo showed Dolya dressed up as the Roman god Neptune entering the cockpit mid-flight, while Yablontsev and his co-pilots were seen laughing.

German magazine Der Spiegel suggested that a “lack of seriousness” may have contributed to the disaster.

Indonesia’s Sky Aviation immediately suspended its purchase of 12 Superjets pending the ongoing investigation into the crash.

Airline officials in Indonesia and elsewhere have said that purchases might resume if it was found that the crash was caused by pilot error rather than technical faults.

But it could take months before investigators can glean from the flight recorders what really happened. In the meantime, confidence in the Superjet will continue to nosedive.


The Jakarta Globe