Trying to understand what happened.
- In the first place, be very careful about believing any rumors or news reports in newspapers or on television. The majority of the stories I have read are often wrong, or contain lots of information that just can't be true.. As an example, I have read at various times that the aircraft attempted to land anywhere from one to five times. Obviously, they can't all be correct. Some of it comes from mistranslation, some from rumors, and some from speculation. Wait until the official accident investigation makes statements before assuming any facts are truly facts.
How come that pilot didn't know his altitude ?
- That is the main question that will be answered by the accident investigation. Until then, anything else is simply someone's guess, and there isn't enough information available to make a reasonable guess..
Optical illusion mentioned before is probably not the case in poor visibility ?
- I could be, since the pilot cannot see the full terrain, and can get fooled by the shape of the cloud cover.
Why control tower didn't warn the crew that they are too low ?
- If the news stories are correct, the tower did warn the aircraft of how low they were. (My previous warning about believing news stories, notwithstanding)
from footage we could see that just after the crash there was one firetruck present and nothing else .
- If you are referring to the video where the cameraman is walking around in the wreckage, that was taken by a journalist who happened to be working very close to where the crash occurred, and got to the site before the emergency vehicles. In the full video you can hear the general alarm whistle being sounded, and the sound of the emergency vehicles as they are arriving. However, the Russians also said that the first emergency people who arrived quickly saw that there was no possibility of any survivors, and probably canceled any large request for ambulances. The police, or perhaps the military can also be heard arriving and ordering the cameraman to leave the area..