Undercover US agents brought down our new Superjet: Russia’s extraordinary claim about crash which killed 45

those are some serious questions

Last Edited by 12.21.12 on 05/24/2012 09:47 PM

Yea I was talking with my friend in Brazil who is a commercial pilot, and he was very surprised by it. The terrain collision warning system should have notified them WELL in advance of going past the point of no return.

He said you have about 45 seconds of the "whoop whoop, pull up", repeating constantly, before collision.

They requested a change in altitude (lower) right before the crash. Do the math on the requested level vs. the crash altitude, and it's pretty clear the terrain alarm would have been freaking out. They were flying low, on purpose, logic says they turned that alarm OFF. On purpose.

Push the envelope. Sometimes you get pushed back. But that would be a little to grown-up to accept.

what is your cat jamming to?

That was another thing that was weird to my friend, the ATC cleared them way below minimum safe operating altitude for that area. You could be right about the envelope and pushing back, as I imagine they wanted to show off on this flight.

There is also redundant warning systems, and radar to consider too. The thing that made me think they flew into the side of a mountain was another pilot local to the area saying ATC there had almost flown her into the side of a mountain once. Another pilot confirmed that ATC in that location is not proficient.

It is just weird, for their lead test pilot, over 10K hours flight time. Like you say though, push the envelope and sometimes it pushes back.

So, what Russia will do about it?

First thing that made me laugh my ass off are the words 'Russian' and 'Superjet' in the same sentence. Those guys make the shittiest commercial airliners on the damn planet. So, their new one was going to be a 'superjet' when every other one they ever made was a total pile of shit that crashed into the ground like every other day???? Seriously???

So, I ask. What is more likely??

American special forces on some super secret mission inside a small baby jet willing to give their lives so that the Russians may be denied a very small slice of the private niche aviation pie??

OR

The Russians made yet another POS commercial airplane that malfunctioned like all their commercial airplanes do and plowed into the side of a mountain.

Hmmmmmm...