I can remember quite a few crashes associated with demonstration flights. I'll bet statistics would show demo flights more dangerous than test flights. I'm not going to do the research but if you do, please post it.

 

How do makers and airlines get away with this? Surely the developmental, or pre certified, status of these aircraft prevents it from carrying pax?... and its not just the Ruskies, look at the A380 and Dreamliner....

 

The Russians and EASA certified it a year ago. Aeroflot has 7 in scheduled service.

 

It is certified. No point in speculating, there's no info available...could have been a terrorist bomb for all we know. In my mind that's the most likely scenario for vanishing with no radio calls...that's a glass-cockpit jet, probably has enough technology to avoid CFIT and most anything else would have afforded time for a mayday.

 

PPRUNE has pictures, flew straight into an almost vertical mountain. Hit about 200 feet below the top.

 

Already posted this on the PPRuNe forum, but here's picture of the aircraft's overhead panel taken on the ground by a ride-along journalist shortly before the accident flight (photo's tag suggests same day):

The SELECTED (indicated in white) position of the TAWS - Terrain button is, frankly, chilling. Have any of you flown an aircraft where selecting TAWS - OFF is SOP in any normal phase of operation?

 

Why is that chilling? Unless I'm missing something the plane is on the ground and turned off?

 

Admittedly not even remotely familiar with the SuperJet. However, the buttonology and logic of that overhead appear to be similar to other recent designs like the E170/190 series. The fact that "OFF" appears on the TAWS switchlight does not mean it's *selected* off. The button is pushed in, which appears in all cases on this panel (and most recent designs) to mean selected to the normal position, ie ON. Look at the Pack and Gen switchlights. They're all pushed in, ie selected ON, but OFF is displayed on the switchlight because the packs have no bleed source and the engines are not running. Similarly, I take the OFF on the TAWS switchlight to mean that TAWS is selected but not available at the time the picture was taken. Perhaps that's because the airplane was on the ground (GPS turned off? Automatically inhibited on the ground?) or perhaps it really was inop on the demonstrator or it did not have a terrain database installed for Indonesia. I'm sure we'll find out sooner or later. I think we can pretty safely rule out the crew deselecting TAWS, though, at least based solely on that picture.

 

Well, one of the first things they said is that they had to call off the rescue efforts due to bad weather. If the airplane was flying in bad weather at low altitude in mountainous terrain, we start to see a very bad decision chain. This doesn't sound like a terrorist action, it sounds like CFIT.

 

Since the impact site is a vertical mountain face, CFIT is looking like a strong possibility.

But they hadn't found the plane when I made that post. A modern glass cockpit "should" have prevented CFIT...