Russian passenger plane Sukhoi Superjet 100 catches fire when landing in Antalya, Turkey

A Sukhoi Superjet 100 of Russia's Azimuth Airline caught fire while landing at the Turkish airport of Antalya. The cause of the incident was said to be a rough landing due to wind shear. Passengers were evacuated via inflatable ramps.

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by SuperJet International, CC BY-SA 2.0

SSJ100 CityJet by Katsuhiko Tokunaga (28182659251)

The airline assured that no one was hurt as a result of the accident. Still, the passengers of the troubled Sukhoi Superjet 100 filed a class action lawsuit against Azimuth.

The airplane kerosene caught fire only on the concrete surface of the runway. The fire miraculously did not spread to the plane itself.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 of the Azimuth airline that caught fire at the Turkish airport had had problems before. There were a few incidents over the past 18 months when the aircraft had aborted takeoffs and returned to the parking lot.

• On September 21 last year, the plane's engine status indicator and crew alert system was activated before takeoff from the Pskov airport. The flight was cancelled.
• On September 26, the flight was postponed again due to an engine malfunction in Mineralnye Vody.
• The plane had to return to be parked in December last year in Sochi and in September this year in Mineralnye Vody.
• On June 20, 2023, the right engine of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 failed during a flight without passengers from Almaty to Mineralnye Vody.
• In May this year, pilots reported a failure of the right generator during a flight from St. Petersburg to Kaluga.

The plane was last inspected just 26 days ago after an emergency landing at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, when landing gear doors of the Sukhoi Superjet 100 were damaged due to a hydraulic system failure.

This is a weak point of all Superjets. In 2019, during an accident at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, the landing gear struts punctured the fuel tanks due to a hard landing. Forty-one people were killed in the ensuing fire.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 that caught fire in Turkey was put in operation seven years ago.

Details

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 (Russian: Сухой Суперджет 100, romanized: Sukhoy Superdzhet 100) or SSJ100 is a regional jet designed by Russian aircraft company Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, a division of the United Aircraft Corporation (now: Regional Aircraft – Branch of the Irkut Corporation). With development starting in 2000, it made its maiden flight on 19 May 2008 and its first commercial flight on 21 April 2011 with Armavia. The 46–49 t (45–48 long tons) MTOW plane typically seats 87 to 98 passengers and is powered by two 77–79 kN (17,000–18,000 lb_f) PowerJet SaM146 turbofans developed by a joint venture between French Safran and Russian NPO Saturn. By May 2018, 127 were in service and by September the fleet had logged 300,000 revenue flights and 460,000 hours. By November 2021 the fleet had logged at least 2,000,000 hours. The type has recorded four hull loss accidents and 89 deaths as of July 2024.