Crash sours Russian hopes of a civilian aviation revival (Flight School)

All 45 people on the plane - crew, journalists, airline representatives and Russian diplomats - were killed when it crashed into Mount Salak about 50 kilometres south of the Indonesian capital Jakarta.

Flight School

The Superjet 100 is the first commercial airliner developed and built by Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union and is intended to compete with Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer in the market for regional carriers of up to 100 passengers.

It is intended by the Russian government to be the first step along the road to the revival of the country's once-significant civil aviation industry and to spur the reindustrialization of Russia, whose economy for the past 20 years has become increasingly dependent on the sale of natural resources.

So far, there is no judgment on whether the cause of the crash was a technical malfunction or pilot error.

If the investigation shows the cause was human error, it will not be as serious a blow to the rebirth of Russia's aero-space industry as it would be if a design or construction fault is blamed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2006 flagged the Superjet 100 as a priority project and pushed the formation of a giant state aircraft holding company, United Aviation Corporation (UAC), to oversee the revival of the commercial aero-space industry.

Russia has maintained a military aviation industry with modernized versions of old Soviet-era warplanes such as the Sukhoi SU-30 and the MiG-35. These have been sold both to the Russian air force and to China, India, Malaysia and Venezuela.

There has been only limited development of new warplanes of which the most innovative is the Sukhoi T-50 stealth fighter-bomber being produced jointly with India.