The newest Sukhoi passenger jet was in Indonesia for a sales trip. It seems to have crashed with 44 passengers aboard.
The sales team is not at all happy, I would suppose.
Wow…it looks bad-brand new jet from a company that never made civilian aircraft.
Maybe too much vodka the night before?
The NYT article on the subject noted that previously, the plant that built the jet was discovered to have 70 engineers that bought their degrees - but of course the company hastily assured everyone that those employees had nothing to do with the design process. Uh huh.
Yesterday an article said the last communication from the plane was a request to descend from 10,000 to 6,000 feet.
Today CNN reports wreckage has been found at 5,800 feet on the side of a volcano.
So it sounds like it wasn’t a mechanical failure – looks like they picked the wrong time to descend to 6,000 feet, to paraphrase Airplane!.
The jet was on a regional PR promotion. They’d just come from Burma, and the next stop was Laos. A new Lao budget carrier called Lao Central Airlines ordered three of these planes in 2010 for delivery later this year. Hope they haven’t paid for them yet!
They might want to lower the price before shopping it around again
You sort of have to think the people who could have signed off on the deal were the ones on the airplane.