One passenger said the incident happened after an apparent argument between the man and his girlfriend.

Similar Posts
Sensis to Design NextGen Airspace Procedures for High Density Airport Terminal Areas
NASA Project Sets Framework for Improved Capacity and Efficiency
EAST SYRACUSE, N.Y., Feb. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Sensis Corporation was selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) Super Density Operations Airspace Design (SDOAD) project. Sensis will develop airspace definitions, including procedures and routes, which will enable NASA to more effectively and accurately research NextGen concepts to increase capacity at high volume, complex airports and surrounding airspaces.
As part of its NextGen initiative, NASA is examining a number of new operational concepts aimed at addressing current and future capacity challenges at major U.S. airports. In order to best test and evaluate these concepts, airspace definitions, including operational procedures and routes, must be developed. Sensis will be modeling the arrival and departure traffic routes for six major Southern California metroplex airports including Los Angeles International, Burbank, Ontario, Long Beach, Santa Ana, and San Diego. The project will entail characterization of traffic flow route and altitude ranges; analysis, modeling and design of continuous descent and standard arrival procedures as well as future departure procedures; and trajectory based evaluation of the modeled procedures. NASA will use the definitions to accurately test new concepts, including automated arrival concepts.
“Current U.S. airport capacity is far less than the forecasted demand. One of the goals of NextGen is to develop new procedures that will unlock capacity by increasing operational efficiencies,” said Ken Kaminski, vice president and general manager, Sensis Air Traffic Systems. “This project looks at a complex high traffic metroplex to identify the individual operational characteristics that need to be taken into account to accurately test NextGen capacity improvement concepts before the concepts are further matured.”
Sensis is a leader in modeling, simulation and analysis of the potential impact of future airspace and airport improvements. Through its fast-time and real-time capabilities, Sensis can generate current and future air traffic demand scenarios, provide system-wide or regional simulations to evaluate current and future air traffic management concepts, and analyze and visualize simulation results.
ABOUT SENSIS CORPORATION
Sensis Corporation provides sensors, information technology, and simulation and modeling to the world’s air navigation service providers, civil aviation authorities, airports, airlines and militaries. Sensis Corporation solutions are deployed around the world. For more information, visit www.sensis.com.
The Investigation of Sukhoi Superjet’s Crash holds Answers to Many Questions
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Egor Naumenko
Today I read an article saying that the SuperJet that crashed on a promotional flight boils down to one question: pilot or plane? I have to disagree. It is not that simple. It takes a lot of coordinating systems to get a plane in the air, and it usually takes more than one error to take a plane down.
If there is a problem with the plane, it is most likely the investigation will reveal it, and anything that comes out before the investigation is just speculation. (How much of the investigation will be made public often depends on the transparency policies of government, however.) So I am speculating here.
Russian Aviation does have a lot riding on the success of this entry into the global aviation marketplace so we know it’s not a paper airplane they folded together in ten seconds or as many months. We suspect that the quality of the teams performing the design, construction, training and troubleshooting that went into the jet’s creation is about par for contemporary jet design. Which is to say the teams are probably very good. The plane has fly-by-wire technology but Sukhoi consults with Boeing on a “step-by-step project management … fully explored and translated into business reality by SCAC.”
There are a number of problems that are coming to light with this flight.
- Only the cockpit voice recorder was found. The FDR was not found.
- The Emergency Locator Transmitter (which goes off, like an airbag, on hard impact) did not go off. The Sukhoi only has one(instead of two, which is the norm) Emergency Locator Transmitter which uses 121.5,203 Mhz. Indonesia receivers operate at 121.5,406 MHZ
- The Terrain map is recorded in the panes database and shows on a display in vertical and horizontal forms. (Did this plane, which was a substitute plane) have an updated terrain map?)
- The Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System/EGPWS should have gone off with terrain warnings after descending to 6000 feet, and these warnings should be in the black box. Wait…no black box was found.
- Was this substitute plane compliant with all airworthiness guidelines and laws?
- Multifunctional Transport Satellites (MTSAT) data revealed that the weather on the Salak Mountain at the time was bad. Cloud and raincover at Salak Mountain was 100 percent.
- The Halim-Pelabuhan Ratu flight plan was considered safe, but on descent to 6000 feet, the pilot detoured from the flight plan.
Sometimes investigations take the easy path and just blame the pilot. I’ve seen happen a hundred times before, when the pilot was blamed simply because he was not longer able to defend his actions. And while pilots are only human, and sometimes do make mistakes, sometimes those mistakes are caused by corporate pressures, pressure to meet deadlines, fuel quotas, scheduling, etc. What is pressure of corporate expectations on a joy flight pilot? Do we know if he was under orders to showcase the plane’s agility, possibly even to make the very move that crashed the plane?
The pilot, 57 year old Alexander Yablontzev was experienced. He was Sukhoi’s chief test pilot and had spent more than 14 thousand hours flying. After retiring as Lieutenant Colonel from the Russian Air Force, he flew for Transaero and had a lot of hours. But the fatal flight was his first time flying in Indonesia. Did the crash occur because he was flying a strange, possibly wrongly mapped terrain, and recklessly “buzzing” the peak of Mount Salak to show off the plane’s versatility?
No answers here. I’m just saying that the question is not so simply put.

Video shows National Guard plane drop fire retardant on California wildfire
Video footage of fire containment efforts shows a California Air National Guard plane “dropping a line of fire retardant on the Palisades Fire.”
Flydubai Flight FZ-981 Crash: Monument to Commemorate Victims Unveiled in Russia
One year after Flydubai flight FZ-981 crashed at Rostov-on-Don airport, Russia, a monument to commemorate the victims was unveiled near the airport.
The plane was coming from Dubai on March 19th, 2016, when it crashed amid bad weather conditions, claiming the lives of 62 people.
The monument, named Interrupted Flight, has been designed by Rostov sculptor Anatolly Sknarin. It shows the names of the victims on a vertical stone slab.
Russian transport minister Maxim Sokolov was quoted as saying, “A year has passed from that horrible tragedy. Today, we open a memorial. Let me express condolences to the relatives of the victims.”

Officials release name of victim in Thursday plane crash
Police said Marsh departed from Lansing on Thursday and was en route to White Plains, New York, to visit family in the area.