The 100-seat aircraft disappeared from radar about 20 minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta for an hour-long flight to show off the new Superjet to representatives of two Indonesian customer airlines and other prospective buyers and industry insiders. Bad weather and harsh terrain delayed responders by a day, but when they discovered the debris field, they saw that the plane had broadsided a nearly vertical mile-high cliff. Hopes that any of the 45 passengers or crew had survived were quickly dashed.
Henry Harteveldt, an industry analyst at the Atmosphere Research Group, says that Sukhoi must now not only respond to the tragedy but also try to figure out how its business of selling Superjets can rebound.
"Was the crash a result of pilot error, a catastrophic airframe failure, bad air traffic control directions, or some combination? It's too soon to know the probable cause," Harteveldt says. "However, if the accident is proven to be the result of some kind of airframe failure, sales will likely dry up until the problem is fixed and proven to be acceptable to trusted aviation safety authorities."
Not the First
The Superjet crash is not the first deadly crash of a demonstration aircraft. In 1994, an Airbus A330 went down during a test flight, killing five Airbus pilots and engineers and two employees of Alitalia, the Italian airline that at the time was considering an order for the new widebody jet.
Five years before that, an Airbus A320, newly delivered to Air France, crashed into a forest during an airshow, killing three and injuring 50. Because the A320 was the world's first predominantly computer-controlled airliner, fears abounded that the plane's artificial intelligence had disobeyed its human pilots and that the program might be doomed. Equally damning to the plane's image was horrifyingly clear video of the crash that would be broadcast around the world.
Yet neither demonstration crash ruined Airbus, nor prevented the planes from becoming a hit. Understandably, Alitalia opted not to order A330s directly after the wreck that killed two of its employees, but plenty of other airlines did, making the A330 a wildly successful model for Airbus. (Alitalia eventually did order more than a dozen A330s several years later). With the A320, investigators ultimately pinned the blame on the pilots, and the A320 family went on to become one of the best-selling aircraft of all time.
So could Sukhoi recover from its high-profile disaster, as Airbus did twice? It may be more difficult, because the Superjet is competing not only against other planes in the crowded 100-seater market but also against Russian aviation's reputation. "[It] is grim, at best," says Robert Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst at the Teal Group.
Historically, Russian airliner manufacturers with names like Ilyushin, Tupolev, Antonov, and Yakolev have been synonymous with questionable safety, suffering many accidents blamed on design flaws and dated technology. Even after the end of the Cold War, most Western carriers have rejected even the thought of operating a Russian-built passenger jet. Outside of Russia and the former Soviet republics, today's largest fleets of Russian airliners are found in Cuba and North Korea.
Russia's Sukhoi conceived the Superjet as a way to clean up that tarnished reputation by collaborating with leading manufacturers from the U.S. and Europe. Sukhoi, which had previously built only military aircraft, worked closely with Boeing on the Superjet's overall design. Snecma, the French engine manufacturer, helped Russia's NPO Saturn engineer the plane's new PowerJet turbines. Scores of other components, including avionics, electrical systems, and landing gear, came from makers who build similar parts for powerhouses like Boeing and Airbus.
Add to those hearty bloodlines a list price about 30 percent lower than competing aircraft, and even before the first Superjet test flight, airlines and leasing companies were already ordering Superjets in large quantities. While Superjet International has not revealed specific sales figures, industry estimates peg the number of planes on order between 170 and 235, largely from customers in Russia and central and southeast Asia.
But, Aboulafia says, the Superjet is still a Russian government?funded aircraft, and one that has not been able to escape from beneath the dark cloud of Soviet era shortfalls. Originally set to enter service at the end of 2008, the first Superjet wasn't delivered to launch customer Armavia until April 2011. Since then, only seven more have made their way out of the factory?all of those to Russia's state-owned carrier, Aeroflot.
Full Recovery?
Indeed, in the long term, whether or not companies buy the Superjet will depend on the outcome of the crash investigation and whether the previously delivered planes are performing up to spec. In the case of Indonesia's Kartika Airlines and Sky Aviation, which have orders for 15 and 12 Superjets on the books but lost employees in last week's crash, that's especially true. Kartika said publicly that it may delay delivery of any Superjets pending the results of the crash investigation.
But while the investigation goes on, the most important thing Sukhoi could do now to recover from this disaster is to actually deliver the planes it has already sold, Aboulafia says?something the company has been unable to do so far. Although Airbus endured demonstration crashes with two different jets and still found sales success, it was at the time of those accidents already an established company that had delivered hundreds of safe, reliable jets. A brand-new Russian manufacturer that has delivered only eight aircraft to date will need to produce a fleet of good planes if it's going to repair its bruised image.
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