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Old 10th May 2012, 07:25
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jetjockey696
 
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Salak Mountains Not Suitable for Joy Ride.....

An aviation consultant said that flying around the Salak Mountains, which are about 100 kilometers to Jakarta’s south, are not safe for a joy ride.

“Mount Salak has steep terrain,” Gerry Soejatman, an aviation consultant, told Jakarta Globe on Thursday. “It is not recommended for a joy ride — I would recommend Indramayu [West Java] and the Krakatau region. But it might be difficult now because flying to that region might potentially meet traffic from Soekarno Hatta airport.”

Gerry, who in the past, has flown to Mount Salak and Mount Gede for mapping expeditions, said that the pilots, who were from Russia and were reportedly not used to flying in Indonesia, must be painstakingly cautious when considering routes in Java’s mountainous regions.

Gerry said that the Russian Sukhoi jet should have been flying above at least 11,000 feet (3,353 meters) to keep safe distance from the Mount Salak, which is 2,211 meters tall.

“From what I heard, the pilot requested to go at 6,000 feet [1,829 meters],” he said. “They might have requested that because they were not accustom with the weather, or not worried about the weather.”

The pilot, he added, should understand that flight timing in Indonesia is also significant.

“In the morning, the sky is clear with some fog,” Gerry said. “In the late morning, it is clear, but sometimes clouds appear. After lunch, it [varies] on how fast the clouds pile up. The clouds would not have been a problem if it went up higher than 20,000 feet.”

Gerry suspected that the Russian airplane —which left Halim Perdanakusuma airport on Wednesday at 2 p.m. — crashed into the mountain wall.

“If the picture I am seeing is correct, the aircraft didn’t fall,” he said. “It hit the wall of mountain. Therefore the airplane didn’t fall out of the sky.”
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