2012 Mount Salak Sukhoi Superjet crash

<noinclude><noinclude>

On 9 May 2012, Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Flight 36801, a Sukhoi Superjet 100 airliner on a demonstration tour in Indonesia crashed into Mount Salak, in the province of West Java. All 37 passengers and 8 crew on board were killed. The plane had taken off minutes before from Jakarta's Halim Airport on a promotional flight for the recently launched jet, and was carrying Sukhoi personnel and representatives of various local airlines.

The subsequent investigation concluded that the flight crew was unaware of the presence of high ground in the area and ignored warnings from the terrain warning system, incorrectly attributing them to a system malfunction while their view was obstructed because of thick cloud cover. It was also established that in the minutes leading to the accident, the crew, including the captain, were engaged in conversation with prospective customers present in the cockpit. The crash was both the first hull loss and the first fatal accident involving a Sukhoi Superjet 100.

Accident

At 14:00 local time (07:00 UTC), the SSJ-100 departed from Halim Perdanakusuma Airport for a local demonstration flight, and was due to return to the departure point. This was the second demonstration flight the aircraft was operating that day. There were six crew, two representatives from Sukhoi and 37 passengers on board. Amongst the passengers were representatives from Aviastar Mandiri, Batavia Air, Pelita Air Service and Sriwijaya Air. At 14:26 (07:26 UTC), the crew requested permission to descend from 10000 ft to 6000 ft, and this was granted. Two minutes later, the crew requested and were approved to "orbit to the right." This was the last contact that Air Traffic Control had with the aircraft, which was then about 75 nmi south of Jakarta, in the vicinity of 7254 ft Mount Salak, a mountain higher than the requested flight level. Four minutes after beginning the orbit, the aircraft's Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System sent out a single "Terrain Ahead, Pull Up" audio alert, warning the crew that their predicted flight path would require a climb to avoid terrain. Immediately after, the warning changed to an "Avoid Terrain" message, which is triggered when the aircraft would also need to be turned to avoid oncoming terrain. While the latter message sounded repeatedly, the pilots briefly discussed the warning and disabled it, believing it to be a problem with the system's terrain database. Less than 30 seconds later, the airplane's aural warning system sounded a "Gear Not Down" alert, which is independent of the EGPWS and signifies the aircraft being too close to the ground without its landing gear lowered. The captain then disengaged the autopilot and put the airplane into a slight nose-up attitude; this was not consistent with an evasive maneuver, and the reason for this input was not conclusively determined. The captain tells the first officer that the autopilot is off, and impact with terrain occurred two seconds later, at 14:33 local time (07:33 UTC).

A ground-and-air search for the aircraft was initiated, but was called off as night fell. On 10 May (the following day) at 09:00 (02:00 UTC), the wreckage of the Sukhoi Superjet was found on Mount Salak. It is only known that the aircraft had been flying on a clockwise flightpath around the mountain, towards Jakarta, before the crash. Preliminary reports indicated that the aircraft had hit the edge of a cliff at an elevation of 6270 ft, slid down a slope and came to rest at an elevation of 5200 ft. The site of the accident was not accessible by air and no rescuers had reached the site by nightfall on 10 May. Multiple groups of rescue personnel attempted to reach the wreckage on foot.