The latest contender for the sector of the market dominated by Embraer’s E-Jet line and Bombardier’s CRJs suffered perhaps the worst kind of public-relations damage one could imagine this month, when a Sukhoi Superjet 100-95 crashed into a sheer mountain face in Indonesia, killing all 45 people on board. Making its second demonstration flight of the day, MSN 95004 had flown just 20 minutes when the flight crew requested a descent to 6,000 feet from 10,000 feet before losing radio contact with ATC. Photographs taken by the Indonesian authorities showed it crashed into the top of a 5,200-foot peak near Mount Salak, some 60 miles south of Jakarta.
An attempt to assess the damage of a deadly accident beyond the human toll might seem premature, or even vulgar, but in this case the promise of thousands of manufacturing jobs—and, indeed, the prestige of a country’s civil aircraft industry—might well hinge on whether or not investigators find that a technical fault led to the disaster.
Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with New Jersey Monthly magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for Aviation International News in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.
