New Russian Jet carrying 46 people missing in Indonesia

9 May 2012 Last updated at 15:09 Share this pageEmail Print Share this page

A new Russian passenger jet carrying 46 people has gone missing on a demonstration flight in Indonesia, after taking off from Jakarta.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 disappeared from radar screens 50 minutes into what was meant to be a brief flight.

An eyewitness reported seeing a low-flying plane flying towards a mountain but did not hear any explosion.

Aerial searches for the plane have been hampered by darkness and wet weather.

But rescuers have continued looking for the plane on the ground.

The plane, which took off at 07:00 GMT, is believed to have had about four hours' fuel aboard, the BBC's Karishma Vaswani reports from Jakarta.

Gagah Prakoso, spokesman for Indonesia's national search and rescue agency, said 46 people had been aboard the plane, which vanished from radar near Bogor, a city in West Java province.

He told BBC News it was unclear who was on board because they were people invited by Sukhoi, but they were "likely to be reps of Indonesian airlines".

Eight of those on board are Russians, including pilots and technicians, the Russian embassy in Jakarta told Reuters news agency.

'Flying low

The plane took off from east Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma airport at 14:00 (07:00 GMT), on its second flight of the day, the Indonesian search and rescue agency spokesman said.

Indonesian officials plotted the plane's movements on a map
"At 14:50 it dropped from 10,000ft [3,000m] to 6,000ft," the agency told AFP. Its location was described as being near Mt Salak (7,200ft, 2,200m).

Rear Marshal Daryatmo, chief of the national search and rescue agency, said the crew had not had time to explain why they wanted to change course.

Juanda, a villager who lives near the mountain, told local TV: "I saw a big plane passing just over my house."

"It was veering a bit to one side, the engine roaring. It seemed to be heading toward Salak, but I didn't hear an explosion or anything."

Jocean Bowler, an American running an organic farm on the slopes of the mountain, which is a popular tourist destination, said: "Salak's a big mountain, I didn't hear anything."

Russian blogger Sergey Dolya, who was accompanying the Sukhoi delegation and broke news of the plane's disappearance, has been filing updates on Twitter, from the emergency operation centre in Jakarta.

"The ground [search] operation will continue all night," he wrote.


"They will try to climb to the highest point. In the morning, they will continue with five helicopters."

Sukhoi officials have been on an Asia-wide tour in recent months to show off their aircraft to airline firms.

The Superjet, a mid-range airliner that can carry up to 100 people, is military plane-maker Sukhoi's first commercial aviation plane.

It was created by a joint venture, majority-owned by Sukhoi, with Italy's Finmeccanica and a number of other foreign and Russian firms also involved.

Sukhoi aimed to sell 42 of its planes to Indonesia, which has witnessed a fast-expanding aviation market to cater for a growing middle class in the world's fourth most populous nation, Reuters adds.
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traffic control lost contact with the jet as it was descending near a mountain range
6:04am UK, Thursday May 10, 2012

Rescuers searching for a missing Russian-made passenger jet carrying 47 people have found the wreckage of the plane.
The plane went missing in Indonesia during a demonstration flight for potential buyers.

Rescue teams were dispatched to the area south of the capital Jakarta.

Over 200 soldiers, police and members of the air joined the land-based rescue efforts.

"Rescuers on the helicopters could clearly see the wreckage located at the top of Mount Salak," said Gagah Prakoso, a spokesman for the Search and Rescue National Agency.

"There is no sign of any of the passengers. We're trying to move in closer to the wreckage now."



The plane is the first completely new airliner designed by Russia since the Soviet collapse

Several diplomats from the Russian embassy, potential buyers and aviation journalists were on board what was supposed to be a 50-minute demonstration flight - the second of the day.

The Sukhoi Superjet-100 had taken off from Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusuma Airport at 2.21pm.

Just 21 minutes into the flight the pilots contacted air traffic control and asked if they could descend from 10,000ft to 6,000ft (3,000m to 1,800m) before dropping off the radar near the the Bogor area.

The plane was flying close to the Salak mountain range and it was raining at the time.

Speaking to local station TVOne, a villager living near the mountains said: "I saw a big plane passing just over my house.

"It was veering a bit to one side, the engine roaring, it seemed to be heading toward Salak, but I didn't hear an explosion or anything."

Developed by the Russian aerospace company Sukhoi in co-operation with Western partners, the plane is the first completely new airliner designed by Russia since the Soviet collapse.

Russia has hoped that the short to mid-range jet, which made its maiden run in 2008, would help it break into international markets dominated by Boeing and Airbus.

http://rt.com/news/russian-plane-missing-indonesia-877/

Here is a link on this. Yesterday RT reported that a hijack was suspected. Looking at the photograph, it doesn't look to me as if the plane crashed - it looks more as if it exploded from the pattern of the debris. We will see. I rather like RT - they were the first a with realistic assessment of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Fairewinds is a good site for that.

Morning tigger, until they do a thorough examination of the cause of the crash we won't know what caused it. However , the Russians are not well
known for their expertise in flying planes, Aeroflot is noted for the number of crashes. Indonesia is doing very well economically and I just wonder why
the U.S. and Europe didn't get any contracts.