41 people died in the Superjet crash at Sheremetyevo

During the emergency landing of Aeroflot's Sukhoi Superjet 100 at Sheremetyevo, 41 people died, the Investigative Committee officially reported . There were a total of 78 people on board. Initially, the UK reported 13 dead.

• What's happened. Aeroflot flight SU 1492 Moscow-Murmansk took off as scheduled on Sunday at about 18.00 Moscow time from Sheremetyevo airport, but after takeoff the crew sent a distress signal and made an emergency landing at about 18.32 Moscow time. After landing, the plane bounced off the runway, the landing gear broke, and a fire started on board. The crew threw out emergency ladders along which passengers were evacuated.

https://twitter.com/RuslanLeviev/status/1125122213789802503

• Footage of the evacuation shows passengers leaving the plane with hand luggage. This is a violation of the rules of conduct for passengers in case of fire on an airplane, which can slow down the evacuation of other passengers.
• The plane was extinguished on the ground for about 20 minutes, Dozhd reported . All that was left of it was the front part of the fuselage; the aircraft cannot be restored.
• According to the latest version, the plane was struck by lightning after takeoff. This caused complete electronic failure. A TASS source called it the main version, which was confirmed by the surviving crew.

Quote. “The main version is a lightning strike on the plane, after which the automation failed. During landing, according to preliminary data, the plane hit the runway twice. The lightning strike was also confirmed by one of the crew members,” the agency’s source said.

• The pilots landed the plane visually and manually. Because of this, the landing was very hard and was accompanied by a “goat” (separation after the first contact with the runway), breakdown of the landing gear and fire of the aircraft.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBf084drzn0

• It remains unclear why lightning hitting an airplane, which is relatively common in aviation, led to such consequences. The last incident of this kind occurred on the approach to Sheremetyevo on April 10 : the A-330 airliner on a flight from New York successfully landed in Moscow.

Superjet problems. To date, the Sukhoi Superjet, flying commercially since 2012, has suffered only one fatal accident. In just 8 years of operation, two aircraft were lost, but the crash of both was not due to technical reasons. The first, due to errors by pilots and air traffic controllers, crashed into a mountain in Indonesia in 2012, and the second rolled off the runway in Yakutsk in 2018 due to errors in the work of airport services.

• If it is not confirmed that the cause of the Sheremetyevo disaster was lightning and not technical problems, this could give customers and operators a reason to abandon the aircraft.
• In terms of average flight time, the Superjet in its eighth year of operation by Russian companies is three times inferior to the Airbus 320 and Boeing 737-800, Vedomosti wrote . The main reasons are problems with the engines and a poorly established airworthiness maintenance system, including a shortage of spare parts, the publication noted. Superjet is also plagued by incompletely cured “childhood diseases” in the form of the air conditioning system and landing gear.
• Average flight time is the main economic indicator of an aircraft for airlines.
• At the beginning of this year, the only European operator, the Irish airline CityJet, abandoned seven leasing Superjet aircraft. After this, information appeared that the largest foreign customer, Mexican Interjet, would also refuse additional purchases. According to Kommersant, the company may go bankrupt and return the planes to Russia.