McConnell Letter to Mikhail Pogosyan, Sukhoi Aircraft Co.

Letter to Mikhail Pogosyan (Sukhoi Aircraft Company) and Colonel Nikolay V. Blednykh (Russian Embassy)

Mikhail Pogosyan, General Director
Sukhoi Aircraft Company
23B Polikarpov Street
Moscow , 125284, Russia

Cc:
Colonel Nikolay V. Blednykh
Russian Embassy
2650 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Washington , DC 20007

13 May, 2012

Director Pogosyan,

My deepest sympathy for the loss of crew and passengers of the Superjet 100 in Indonesia .

I am a retired Delta Airlines pilot and retired USAF F4 and F16 pilot. I have 23,000 hours of incident free flying. I would like to speak with someone with authority to speak for Sukhoi and I would like to speak to the Sukhoi engineering/test pilot/safety personnel with a representative of the Russian Embassy in attendance.

My military career includes being deployed from NAS Keflavik in April, 1982 to intercept Soviet Bear and Badger bombers. My civilian career includes having a retired Bear pilot in my cockpit on a flight from TSE to SVO.

In addition to a 39 year flying career, I have also been an attentive student of aircraft crashes that involve both FADEC and Thales technologies. I feel strongly the the incident involving the Sukhoi Superjet bears the same ‘footprint’ as these incidents: Turkish 1951/AMS, Speedbird 38/LHR, Adam Air 574/Indonesia, Kenya 507/Cameroon, Air France 447/Atlantic, CF18/Lethbridge, Canada and F18/Oceana, Virginia .

If Sukhoi and the Russia Embassy see merit in my becoming a ‘demonstration pilot’ for Sukhoi internationally and especially in North America and Eurasia I would be most happy to prove to the world that your products are safe, efficient and reliable. I have included a link to a demonstration of the world's lowest jet-jet air refueling at bottom of page.

My flying background speaks for itself. More importantly is the true history that on March 2, 2007 I was forced to retire early from Delta ( then Northwest ) after I relayed safety sensitive information to FBI, FAA, Northwest Airlines and NoRAD. The safety information includes specific illegal modifications to Boeing/Airbus glass cockpit and FADEC/Thales equipped aircraft. I next flew in Kazakhstan for 18 months with copilots who were Kazakh or Russian. I have 3750 hours in command of A319/20/21 aircraft in addition to type ratings in CV580, DC9, DC10 and A330 aircraft.

The Chief Pilot of the Astana Pilot Base is Captain Sergei Alexandrovich and he administered my last line check during my 18 months flying in Kazakhstan . If you contact him he can attest to 3 significant issues:

1) My being the first Air Astana pilot to score 100% on the English proficiency
2) My saving an A320 from being destroyed on 13 December, 2008
3) My productivity and teamwork in that on my last day of flying for Air Astana
I completed 5 segments when the current ‘agreement’ was 2 segments maximum
per duty day.

In the United States some military pilots are becoming aware of some issues that I have raised in three federal lawsuits. Had those lawsuits been responded to appropriately, the Speedbird 38, Turkish 1951, Air France 447, CF18 and F18 incidents may well have been prevented.

Fighter Pilots Claim Intimidation Over F-22 Raptor Jets

I look forward to your response and am free to travel ( at no cost ) MSP-JFK-SVO or to Washington DC or any other major city in North America if your aircraft company, and Russia, see merit and value in having a person with my background demonstrating the quality and performance of the Sukhoi Superjet.

Best Regards,

Field McConnell
Retired Captain/Delta
Retired Lt. Col/USAF

N3572 CR S
Plum City WI 54761
USA

+001 715 307 8222


Demonstration flight F4D July, 1985.