The plane had taken off minutes before from Jakarta's Halim Airport on a promotional flight for the recently launched jet, and was carrying Sukhoi personnel and representatives of various local airlines.

A leak in a 'nozzle in the engine' was found in this plane on the way to Myanmar, according to Alexander Tulyakov, vice-president of the United Aircraft Corporation, and it returned to Moscow.

[12] High turbulence and fast-changing weather conditions of the mountainous terrain are cited as contributing factors to multiple aviation crashes in the area.

"[15] This was the last contact that Air Traffic Control had with the aircraft,[6] which was then about 75 nautical miles (86 mi; 139 km) south of Jakarta,[4] in the vicinity of 7,254-foot-high (2,211 m) Mount Salak, a mountain higher than the requested flight level.

While the latter message sounded repeatedly, the pilots briefly discussed the warning and disabled it, believing it to be a problem with the system's terrain database.

The captain then disengaged the autopilot and put the airplane into a slight nose-up attitude; this was not consistent with an evasive maneuver, and the reason for this input was not conclusively determined.

[20] The 45 people on board included 14 people from the Indonesian airline Sky Aviation, Captain Aan Husdiana (Director of Operations for Kartika Airlines) and five reporters, Dody Aviantara (journalist) and Didik Nur Yusuf (photographer) from Angkasa aviation magazine, Ismiati Soenarto and Aditya Sukardi of Trans TV and Femi Adi of the American Bloomberg News.

[17] An accomplished and experienced pilot, Peter Adler held a US passport, acting as a consultant and a passenger on the flight;[18] according to Vladimir Prisyazhnyuk, the head of Sukhoi Civil Aircraft, two Italians and one French citizen of Vietnamese descent were also on board.

[25] One day after the crash, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev set up a commission, headed by Yury Slyusar of the Industry and Trade Ministry, to investigate the cause of the accident.

[citation needed] According to the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC), the Indonesian agency for the investigation of civil aircraft accidents, analysis of the crash would take up to 12 months.

A contributing factor was the lack of a Minimum Safe Altitude Warning System at the airport and the air traffic controller being too overworked to notice the impending crash.

[34] Arifin Seman, the commissioner of Kartika Airlines, another domestic Indonesian carrier, went on record to say that the delivery of 30 Superjet 100s, which his company had ordered, would likely be delayed following the crash.

Moreover, Sky Aviation's general manager for promotion, Sutito Zainuddin, added that "the additional 100-seat planes would be needed to connect major cities in Indonesia, particularly Jakarta".

[36] Mexico's Interjet Board chairman Miguel Alemаn Velasco said the crash had no influence on the company's desire to purchase additional Superjets.