A group of journalists, officials from eight Indonesian airlines and technical and marketing staff from Sukhoi are among the 47 passengers and crew who were confirmed killed in the crash of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 demonstrator in Indonesia yesterday.
The country's search and rescue agency (Barsanas) announced that the wreckage was found early this morning by a search helicopter on Mount Salak.
Indonesia’s director general for civil aviation Herry Bakti said that the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder are being searched for in the crash scene – a forested cliff, some 5,800 feet above sea level. The wreckage is said to be spread over a wide area of the remote mountainside.
Sukhoi has been on a sales mission around Asia and the Middle East this year promoting the newly certified aircraft. The international sales are organised by Italian partner in the project Finmaccanica’s Alenia. One of the demonstration aircraft was on show at the Bahrain Airshow earlier this year and is being considered by Bahrain Air.
For yesterday’s promotional programme, the aircraft was on its second demonstration flight of the day and had enough fuel for a 4 hour long flight, but radar contact was lost 20 minutes after take-off near the town of Bogor.
Unconfirmed local reports say that the pilot had, before the incident, requested permission to descend from 10,000ft to 6,000ft in mountainous terrain. Mount Salak rises to over 7,000ft.
In a statement, Superjet International confirmed the aircraft had completed a full pre-flight check and reported no technical issues before taking off. The flight crew didn’t report any failure before disappearing from radar contact, the joint venture company said.
Article Source : Arabian Aerospace
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