“They have to clear this up very, very fast in terms of causes,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst at the Teal Group consultancy in Fairfax, Va. “This plane had given the Russians hope that they could resurrect some of what they once had.”

At $31.7 million, the Superjet’s price was one-third cheaper than comparable short-hop jets produced in Canada, and the company had said it hoped to sell 1,000 over the next two decades.

Last week, Sukhoi began a six-nation road show of presentations to Asian airline executives and had already made stops in Myanmar, Pakistan and Kazakhstan. Wednesday’s flight in Indonesia was to have been followed by visits to Laos and Vietnam. Sergei Dolya, a photographer with the tour who was not on the flight, posted images of flight attendants pouring Champagne and of himself dressed as Neptune, with a beard and trident, greeting passengers.

Superjet said that the aircraft had gone through a preflight check and that a first demonstration flight on Wednesday morning “went without technical problems.” The aircraft did not report any failure before disappearing from radar screens, according to a statement posted online. It said the aircraft had completed 500 flights without any reports of serious technical problems.

Until a crash inquiry is done, analysts said, Sukhoi will have difficulty marketing the Superjet. “It would be entirely understandable for any potential customer to hold off until it’s determined whether the cause was human error or mechanical failure,” said Sash Tusa of Echelon Research and Advisory in London.

Image An official said there were no signs of survivors in the wreckage of the Sukhoi Superjet 100. Credit... The New York Times

While it is rare for such a young aircraft to crash, it is not unprecedented — an Airbus 320 crashed during a demonstration flight in 1988, killing three people and injuring 50. Investigators determined that the cause had been pilot error and found no evidence of a malfunction. The A320 went on to be one of the world’s best-selling aircraft models.