[jwr]

There is no ILS at this airport. That was a visual approach with almost zero visibility.

These aircraft are old, but have received extensive maintenance and upgrades, so a mechanical failure isn't likely. What you have to remember, though, is that a Tu-154 does not climb as well as a modern jet. So an aborted landing is much more dangerous, as you don't have enough engine power to climb quickly.

The pilot made four landing attempts (these are the best of pilots, so I suspect he was told to), the last one being fatal. Also, I don't expect a sane pilot to try to make a turn at low altitude right after an aborted landing, so the stories about the plane being in a turn probably mean the plane was already in a stall and falling.

Also, the runway at this airport is very short for the Tu-154 even at the best of times, so the pilot would have to touch down at the very beginning of the runway. In a dense fog that is extremely difficult.

It's a sad day. We might never know what really happened on board, but I strongly suspect that the pilots did not want to proceed and that either the presidential staff or one of the generals on board told the pilots to land anyway.

[maigret]

I had the opportunity to discuss that with a pilot who uses to land in Russia in different airports and explained us NDB landings in Russia. The pilot made only one landing attempt that failed, the other ones are the standard procedure in Russia where ATC take you down step by step in the traffic pattern - make you flight 3 or 4 circuits round over the runway. Also the captain didn't have much hours of flights compared to his years of experience - a common pattern in the east countries who don't have much money for military aircrafts expenses. It looks like a flying error at the end, he maybe have turned over the trees (probably because the NDB wasn't on the runway centerline), and was too low too early... Investigation will tell more hopefully.