Machinbird 20 June:
Anyone know if the Superjet has hard or soft g limits in its flight control system?
It would be a bear to find out that you need 2.8 g to miss terrain (through faulty planning of course), and to have the system limit you 2.5 g.
Maybe it's worth thinking about this a bit more. We were told that this was a test aircraft, substituted because of a last-minute issue with the original sales demonstration aircraft. I seem to recall reading that the cockpit was equipped with parachutes, and you can see in the video of the first flight that the cabin attendant appears apologetic about the test equipment occupying some of the seat space in the passenger cabin. So it was a somewhat more complex aircraft than normal, and a test pilot had been assigned.
Is it conceivable that software was changed for the demonstration purposes and that pilot was not aware that he did not have his usual climbing ability because of a substituted g limitation? In which case this might not be pilot error so much as a Sukhoi administrative miss.