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[Text/Observer Network columnist Zhang Zhonglin]

On July 12, a Russian SSJ-100 passenger plane crashed near Moscow shortly after takeoff.

The crash happened when the Russian SSJ-100 (SSJ-NEW), a new configuration that was domestically produced except for the engine, was undergoing a test flight. Therefore, after learning about the crash, I first paid attention to whether the crashed aircraft was a domestically produced aircraft.

Further news later confirmed that this was an old SSJ-100 that was already 9 years old, not a domestically produced aircraft on test flight. The crashed aircraft crashed during a refit flight after an overhaul, with only three crew members on board (two pilots and one mechanic). The flight results proved that the aircraft had not been repaired.

The crashed plane belonged to Gazprom Aviation, which flies routes related to the oil and gas industry, and mostly cargo and charter flights. It is not a regular airline. Although the ADS-B equipment was not turned on during the test flight when the plane crashed, Russia quickly announced the relevant situation, allowing us to get a glimpse of the truth. As a Russian-made aircraft affected by sanctions, its use is also a good entry point to observe the current situation of the Russian aviation industry.

Accident Analysis

As mentioned above, the crashed plane was a 9-year-old SSJ-100 from Gazprom Aviation. According to information released by the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, the plane flew from Lukehovichi Airport to Moscow Vnukovo to perform a maneuvering mission. The plane took off at 14:52 local time and maintained an altitude of 1,500 meters after takeoff. At 14:58, the plane was still at an altitude of about 1,300 meters, but at 14:59 the plane fell rapidly, losing 600 meters in 7 seconds, and then crashed.

Plane crash site

There happened to be a surveillance camera at the crash site that recorded the plane crash. From the video, it can be seen that the plane fell to the ground at a very steep angle and at a high speed. Soon after it disappeared from the screen, a large ball of fire and thick smoke rose. Russia quickly announced the preliminary cause, believing that the Russian-French SaM146 engine used by the SSJ-100 had a malfunction that caused the air crash.

The last image of SSJ-100 before it crashed

Generally speaking, if a single engine failure occurs in the air, it will not directly cause the plane to crash, because handling a single engine failure is a compulsory course for every pilot. Even if the aircraft is not at a high altitude (1,500 meters), there is not enough height to handle it, and there will not be such a steep falling curve.

The possibility of a crash caused by a double engine failure is not high. Not to mention that the probability of both engines failing is extremely low, even if a double engine failure does occur (such as the "Miracle on the Hudson River" incident where both engines failed due to a bird strike), there is still a certain altitude and speed for the pilot to deal with it. For example, find a relatively flat area for an emergency landing, so the crash caused by a single engine failure can be ruled out.

If the cause of the crash as stated by Russian officials is engine failure, then judging from past plane crash cases, this kind of dive crash is also possible.

In 2021, the Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 crashed in Indonesia. About 5 minutes after the plane (Boeing 737-500) took off, it fell directly into the sea in a nearly dive posture, which is quite similar to the SSJ-100 accident. The conclusion of the investigation at the time was that due to a failure in the automatic throttle control of the aircraft, one engine had reduced thrust while the other was still in a high output state during takeoff, resulting in inconsistent output on both sides, and the aircraft attitude lost balance, eventually causing the aircraft to make a sharp turn and fall into a dive state. The low altitude of the aircraft did not allow the pilot to have enough time and altitude to deal with it, and the aircraft eventually crashed.

As an aircraft with the same wing-mounted engine layout as the Boeing 737, if the engine fails and the thrust is abnormal, there is indeed a possibility that the aircraft will deflect and fall into a dive due to the inconsistent thrust, which is also considered an "engine failure." The Russian-French SaM146 engine used by the SSJ-100 is indeed notoriously unreliable.

The SaM146 engine used by the SSJ-100 is manufactured by Powerjet, a joint venture between Russia's Saturn Consortium and France's Safran. It is a product of Russian-French cooperation. It uses the hot end components of the French M88 engine and the gear box and low-pressure turbine of the CFM56 engine, which has sold tens of thousands of units worldwide. It can be said to be of authentic French origin.

However, the SaM146 engine had many problems after it was put into use. The oil collector and combustion chamber of the engine had cracks after 2,000-4,000 hours of flight, and needed to be returned to the factory for refurbishment, and sometimes even needed an overhaul after 1,000 hours. Even with the average overhaul interval of 8,000 hours when designed, this time is relatively short, which is a fatal weakness for a commercial aircraft engine. Moreover, this engine is specially designed for the SSJ-100, and it is "unique".

The shadow of sanctions

Although the SSJ-100 is an aircraft with many problems, it is a case of a lot of minor problems and few major problems. A total of 175 of this model have been produced since it was put into operation, and in the past ten years, there have been three air crashes with the destruction of the aircraft and the death of people, including this accident:

The first air crash was when the SSJ-100 was performing a demonstration flight in Indonesia. Due to pilot error and unfamiliarity with local conditions, the plane crashed into a mountain. The second air crash was in May 2019 when it was struck by lightning after taking off from Moscow Airport. When it made an emergency landing on its return flight, it caused a fire due to a hard landing. Objectively speaking, the first two accidents were natural disasters and had nothing to do with the aircraft itself. However, the Russian authorities clearly stated that this air crash was caused by engine failure.

As we all know, after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on February 24, 2022, Western countries quickly imposed comprehensive sanctions and embargoes on Russia, and civil aircraft were the top priority of the sanctions, completely cutting off the supply of aviation materials and technical support for Russian aircraft. Since nearly 70% of the Russian fleet is European and American aircraft, accounting for 95% of the capacity, coupled with the lack of preparation in advance, the Western embargo inevitably had a very serious impact on the operation of Russian civil aviation. After being separated from the original factory's aviation material supply and technical support, the Russian aviation industry suffered an extremely heavy blow at the very beginning.

Of course, Russia will not sit still and wait for death. In the early stage, it immediately took emergency measures to ground some aircraft and sacrifice them as "organ donors" to remove parts to ensure the flight of other aircraft. At the same time, the Russian aviation industry also "showed its magical powers" and tried every means to make the aircraft work normally. Some purchased aviation parts and accessories through shell companies in Turkey and shipped them to Russia (according to Reuters, the value was about 1.2 billion US dollars); some took advantage of routes with friendly countries and had to carry out "emergency repairs" locally due to "serious mechanical failures" after flying international flights to friendly countries.

In addition, Russia is also using its own huge aviation industry base to produce some domestic alternative aviation materials for domestic European and American aircraft fleets. After all, many things made by themselves can be used, but they have not passed the airworthiness certification. In this special period, airworthiness certification is the last thing to consider.

However, these methods can only obtain some common goods, such as consumables or commonly used parts of Boeing and Airbus. There is still no way to obtain large items that need to be registered, such as engines and landing gear. Of course, although these two large items are difficult to obtain, they are not completely impossible. After all, there are thousands of Boeing and Airbus aircraft flying around the world, and even if you buy dismantled parts from scrapped aircraft, you can make do. But the situation faced by SSJ-100 is different.

Western equipment and subsystems used by the SSJ-100

As the SSJ-100 was developed using the global mainstream "main manufacturer-supplier" model, it uses a large number of mature Western off-the-shelf products and subsystems. There is no doubt that all of these Western equipment are on the sanctions list. If Airbus and Boeing's aircraft can "show their magical powers" because of their large number of global users, then the SSJ-100 is really only used by Russia, and all of them are special parts, and there is no way to find someone to distribute them.

Therefore, the problems faced by the SSJ-100 are the most prominent among all the aircraft used by Russia, not to mention that the SaM146 engine is not a reliable thing. Sukhoi is thankful that it can repair the SaM146 engine. It is no wonder that we have seen frequent accidents in the Russian aviation industry in the past two years, and the SSJ-100 has the most accidents.

The difficult road to domestic substitution

For Russia, although the existing Boeing and Airbus fleets can still be "maintained and overcome", there is a limit after all. It is impossible to make do with the lack of parts like Cuba or Iran and fly the aircraft for 30 years. In addition, Russia has inherited the legacy of the huge aviation industry during the Soviet era. A lean camel is bigger than a horse, so it still has a certain ambition. Therefore, in June 2022, the Russian government proposed the grand "Comprehensive Plan for the Development of the Russian Federation's Air Transport Industry by 2030".

The plan proposes to strengthen aircraft maintenance capabilities in Russia, and to have the ability to perform high-level scheduled inspections on Boeing and Airbus aircraft, establish alternative supply chains to meet the maintenance needs of airlines under the blockade of Europe and the United States, and allow Boeing and Airbus aircraft that could only be inspected and maintained abroad to be completed in Russia. The most critical part is the proposal for the national production of SSJ-NEW (the nationalized version of SSJ-100) and MC-21 passenger aircraft.

In this plan formulated in 2022, Russia ambitiously plans to start delivering SSJ-NEW in 2023 and MC-21 passenger aircraft with domestically produced configuration in 2024, with plans to produce a total of 142 SSJ-NEW and 270 MC-21 passenger aircraft by 2030.

However, things did not go as planned. The domestically produced SSJ-NEW, which was originally scheduled to be delivered in 2023, has not yet received its domestically produced PD-8 engine. The SSJ-NEW, which completed its first flight, is still using the sanctioned SaM146 engine. Although the MC-21 is better than the SSJ-NEW, it is only slightly better. Thanks to the fact that the Russian state-developed PD-14 has completed domestic certification and is in a usable state, the domestically produced MC-21 equipped with the PD-14 engine is also scheduled to complete its first flight in the near future, but this obviously cannot meet the node target set for 2022.

Flight manuals scattered at the accident site Oriental IC

Therefore, in May 2024, the Russian government revised the 2030 Aviation Plan, and the core of the revision was the adjustment of the production plan of domestically produced alternative aircraft and engines. The delivery of 2 SSJ-NEW aircraft, which was originally scheduled to be delivered in 2023, was postponed to 2026, and the delivery of 6 domestically produced MS-21 aircraft, which was originally scheduled to be delivered in 2024, was postponed to 2025. It can be said that the domestically produced alternative new passenger aircraft that Russia has high hopes for have been postponed across the board, and the SSJ-NEW plan, which was originally considered to be less difficult, has been postponed for three years.

To some extent, this is also a situation where "I thought it was simple before I did it, but I realized how difficult it was after I did it", and I had to revise the plan. The reason is that the localization of aircraft is not just about replacing a subsystem or component with a domestic part. Take SSJ-NEW as an example. Compared with the original SSJ-100, SSJ-NEW replaced 33 systems and equipment imported from the West, including engines, APU, avionics equipment, hydraulic systems, air conditioning, etc. Although it can provide similar alternative equipment, its performance and reliability are still somewhat behind Western products. Most importantly, a large number of new systems require a new flight management system. In other words, integrating various "components" and "assembling" them into an aircraft is the core technology of aircraft manufacturing, which is not that simple.

For us, the current difficulties Russia is facing are a good learning sample. Although the domestically produced large aircraft C919 has been put into use, the mainstream fleet is still Boeing and Airbus aircraft. Fortunately, we are not unprepared for this. Boeing and Airbus aircraft are not mentioned for the time being. C919 has long had a domestically produced configuration plan for CXF, and the development and testing of the supporting CJ1000A engine are also progressing step by step. Although we dare not guarantee that the sanctions we may face in the future will be passed safely, we will be more fully prepared, and China's civil aviation will also do its best to meet this storm and ensure the absolute safety of air transportation.

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