Russian investigators puzzled by plunge
By Geoffrey Thomas Sat Mar 19, 2016
Russian investigators are mystified by an unexplained plunge that led to the crash of a FlyDubai 737 which killed all 62 aboard in Russia on Saturday.
The pilots had aborted their second attempt at landing and were climbing through 1550m at 370km/hr when their 737 suddenly - and without warning - plummeted into the airport disintegrating in a fireball beside the runway.
Low grade CCTV vision clearly shows the 737 descending at high speed to impact but what is not so clear is whether the bright light was the aircraft’s landing lights or the 737 on fire.
The five-year old aircraft was operating flight FZ981 from Dubai to Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia and had spent 2.5 hours in a holding pattern waiting for bad weather to clear before attempting a second landing.
The 737-800, registration A6-FDN had aborted the first approach to Rostov's runway 22 at 1.41am local time due to weather and entered various holding patterns waiting for an improvement in the weather.
Data from Flightradar24 then shows the 737 descending to an altitude of 1550 feet for its second attempt to land when it began to climb again at 5.6 km short of the runway.
It reached an altitude of 3975 feet and then entered a steep descent before impacting the airport.
The 737 had sufficient fuel for another 2 hours of flight and could have easily diverted to another airport as an Aeroflot flight had done earlier.
The pilots of the 737 were termed as “quite experienced” by the airline with the Cypriot captain having 5,965 hours while the Spanish co-captain 5,769 hours.
Authorities in Russia say they have ruled out terrorism and according to investigative committee spokeswoman Oksana Kovrizhnaya, they will be looking at technical issues, severe weather and human error.
Kovrizhnaya told CNN that the investigations will take at least two months, as required by Russian law, but "could be prolonged."
Russian investigators will be joined by a team from the UAE as well as representatives from the US National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing.
The aircraft’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have both been recovered.
FlyDubai said that 44 of the passengers were Russians, eight Ukrainian, two Indian and one Uzbekistani. Thirty-three of the passengers were women, 18 were men and four were children.
FlyDubai is a Dubai based low cost airline formed in 2009 that operates to 95 destinations with 50 aircraft.
Up to yesterday's crash it had a perfect safety record.
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