What: Sukhoi Superjet 100-95 en route from Jakarta to Jakarta Halim Perdanakusuma Airport
Where: Indonesia
When: May 9th 2012
Who: 36 passengers, 6 crew and 2 Sukhoi official
Why: Indonesian special police found the engines, running gear of the SSJ-100, and located (but have not retrieved) the black boxes. The Sukhoi cockpit design is similar to Airbus, with fly by wire technology and a “joystick.”
The Flight Data recorder is believed to be at a depth of 500 meters under rock and debris on the rockface, making the recovery tricky.
No answers have been found why the pilots requested to descend to 6,000 feet from an altitude of 10,000 feet, while flying above a 6000+ mountain in heavy cloud cover. The pilot was an experienced pilot but had not flown in this area and may not have been intimately familiar with the topography. Was he planning on buzzing the peaks, or was the plane in trouble? The black boxes will contain the answer.
