[SmartCat]

Lightning Caused Deadly Plane Landing In Russia, Says Pilot
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ligh...-pilot-2033659

The pilot of a Russian passenger plane that erupted in a ball of fire on the runway of Moscow's busiest airport, killing 41 people, said lightning led to the emergency landing. He did not specify if the plane was struck directly

Several of the 78 people on board said they believed lightning was the cause of the tragedy, which came at the end of several days of public holidays following Workers' Day on May 1. "I saw a flash of white light," Dmitry Khlebushkin told the state RIA news agency. Pyotr Egorov, also on board, told media: "We had just taken off when the plane was hit by lightning."

Video shot from outside:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX_tMKmUjbg&t=29s

Video shot by passenger from inside the aircraft:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_qNMCE7A2U

[Soumyajit9]

Extremely unfortunate incident. Peace to the departed souls and strength to the near and dear ones.

From the second video it is very clear that the plane bounced off the runway and hit the runway hard on the 2nd landing causing sparks and subsequent burst of fire.

As viewed from the flight radar data in the second video, the aircraft was hovering above the airport to land and was on the 2nd attempt to land.
I think there was a slight confusion over land or to-go and a last minute call was made to land.
Lightning or not will be evident from the FDR and CVR only. Until then it will be only speculation and conspiracy theories on why the pilot declared Mayday.

Nevertheless, 40+ dead out of ~70 passengers is extremely bad on aviation history.

Read elsewhere that there is a massive push by Russian Govt to fly homegrown Sukhoi Superjet on domestic routes. They might take a few more decades to comes of age with Boeing or Airbus.
Their majority of international routes still use Airbus and Boeing.


BBC report provides more details around the incident.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48174169

[norhog]

https://youtu.be/Iqd_0VfjXjM

Some more details by CNN. The landing speed seems to be very fast, as per my perception, as compared to what I have seen as a casual observer from ground and on board.
The plane bounced and burst in flames on the second impact. No news of the damage condition of aircraft to come in like this.
The aviation gurus please share your valuable insights.

[libranof1987]

Quite a sad incident; the cause of the fire seems to be the hard landing, perhaps caused by inoperable flight controls after a lightning strike. Planes get hit by lightning pretty regularly but the last time it caused a crash was 1988!

http://lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lls/...on_losses.html

Was just reading up on the aircraft, not a pretty read. While the aircraft has had only one fatal accident (blamed on pilot error), there seem to be regular problems with regards to parts availability and cost of repairs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Superjet_100

Vasily Kryuk, Yamal’s general director, as saying his company was dropping plans to buy 10 more Sukhoi Superjets because servicing costs were too high.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-r...-idUSKCN1SC1CB

This being Russia, and the aircraft being state-promoted, who knows if the entire truth will come out, and will lead to necessary changes.

[V.Narayan]

Tragic terrifying and fiery end for several of those on board. The primary cause of the violent fire was the apparent collapse of the main landing gear after an extraordinary hard landing caused by the very fast vertical descent rate. It seems the fuel in the mid section tanks exploded on the collapse and the sparking from metal being dragged along at ~150 to 180 KMPH. What caused the aircraft to not be fully in the control of the pilots we don't know yet. One guess being lightining .

From what little I know of the Sukhoi Super Jet it is not a very well designed machine. For now we really don't know what caused the dangerously hard landing.

[the_skyliner]

What a tragic accident.

So this is a second SSJ100 crash. The first one was of it's demo aircraft somewhere in South-Asia during a demo flight and costed 40+ lives if I am not mistaken.

That was due to pilot error as per reports.

BTW, SSJ100 has EASA type certification since long now.

[Rehaan]

Scary.

You can literally see the difference a few seconds makes in a video like this.

Fortunately the plane came to a halt with the nose pointing into the wind (so the fire didn't engulf more of the front of the fuselage).

[norhog]

https://youtu.be/-y0dhayVtWY