Highlights from SSJ 100 crash site: The worst place in the whole mountain!
Following on from SSJ Descent: Innocent but deadly, I theorized on how the plane could innocently made the descent, and how the ATC could also be blameless for authorizing the descent. That article does not explain how it ended up hitting the mountain. In this article I am showing where it crashed, but not how it ended up there. This accident is already very tragic, but criticism on the pace of the salvage efforts, like many other things in this accident, irks me. Let me add to the tragedy a little bit: the aircraft ended up at possible the worst place in the whole mountain!
Why do I say it is the worst place in the mountain?
It is located near the peak of the mountain.
The terrain wall it hit, is amongst the largest in terms of height from top to bottom, in the whole mountain, and it is one of the steepest.
It is in a narrow confined location.
From the previous article SSJ Descent: Innocent but deadly , I wrote about how the crew might not realize that Mt. Salak was there. However, the explanation in that article, makes it extremely difficult to reconcile with the crash site. The trajectory from that analysis, would yield an impact from the north east or from the east. On the photo of the crash site on the cliff wall, it should show a predominantly left-to-right trajectory, but the photo shows impact characteristics that relatively right-to-left, which means, the aircraft had to come from the north and at relatively high speed (300 knots ground speed is just within “high speed impact” category in my books). BUT… details of the crash site, description of the bodies found, description of “engines relatively intact”, etc, all point to a low to medium speed impact.
Therefore, there HAS to be a different theoretical trajectory for the aircraft that is different from my previous article. It looks like I found it just now… but it’ll take time for me to write it as I need to take time to make sure it looks plausible, and doesn’t break my own ethical boundary for “objective speculation.”
Maps (first two) from the concluding part is also arranged in order to give an overall view on how the flight might have entered the area and where they ended up…
Gerry’s revised assumption of the flight path of the first demo flight
I have decided to not clutter the map with my writing, but marked key items in the map.
For the Cyan coloured items:
1 A line depicting a course of 200° outbound from Halim VOR.
2 A 20 nautical mile radius ring.
3 AL Non-Directional Beacon.The Magenta coloured items:
1 Aircraft took off from runway 24, and made a left turn to the southwest towards Bogor Training Area while climbing to 10,000ft.
2 Entering Bogor Training Area, aircraft turned left to the east.
3 A right-hand orbit (360° turn) was made at position HLM200/20 (20 nautical miles from Halim VOR on radial 200°).
4 After completing the orbit, aircraft leaves Bogor Training Area towards AL01, and begins to descend to 6,000ft sometime after completing the turn.
5 Approximate position of aircraft when the flight deck photos were taken (Near radial 150° at 10 nautical miles from Halim VOR), as aircraft descended towards 6,000ft. Aircraft then descended further along the magenta line until on the ILS for runway 24, and landed.
Gerry’s assumption of the second flight
For the Cyan coloured items:
1 A line depicting a course of 200° outbound from Halim VOR.
2 A 20 nautical mile radius ring.The Magenta coloured items:
1 Aircraft took off from runway 06, and made a right turn to intercept the Halim VOR radial 200° whilst climbing to 10,000ft.
2 Aircraft continued on a course of 200° and reached 10,000ft, to enter the Bogor Training Area. The request to descend to 6,000ft and the right hand orbit would be made shortly after this.
3 After entering the training area, a right-hand orbit (360° turn) was made at position HLM200/20 (20 nautical miles from Halim VOR on radial 200°), and the aircraft also descended to 6,000ft. Note: This should keep the aircraft within the training area throughout the orbit turn.What should have happened then:
4 After completing the orbit, aircraft leaves Bogor Training Area on the same heading before performing the orbit, and it is to obtain Air Traffic Control (ATC) Clearance to head back to Halim for the approach to runway 06.
5 Aircraft would continue to descend to 1600 until performing a visual approach to runway 06, or reach the position of HLM250/5 (5 nautical miles from Halim at radial 250°), and land.We know points 4 & 5 never happened because the aircraft never made it back to the airport. But why?
An incoming path from between north and north east, is a lot more likely. There is a lot of space for them to end up hitting the cliff, without too many probable incoming paths.
looking at what could have been near to the actual flight that happened, it is so damn to see that of all the available area, they went right into the ridge. And as I mentioned in earlier in the thread, the aircraft probably descended right onto the mountains.. 🙁
From Gerry’s excellent analysis and illustration we see that the SSJ-100 probably descended from 10,000ft into the ridge (?) or at the mouth of that ridge… and then at an air-speed of around 238kts, the aircraft probably did not last long before it crashed onto the mountain…
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