Komandir's name - Jury Rodionov, age 38 or 39. Nothing else is known of the crew. Journalists search for him but the avia-base replies "Rodionov took a holiday" :o) The plane is in the same air-base in Chkalovsk, various commissions are visiting it.
TU-s mechanics across Russia are said to be crawling over full TU insides checking their planes. In alarm.Only they don't know what to look for.
There are some theories that there are 2 wires in TU154 planes marked same colour, and they could have been mixed up. As the plane spent 10 yrs outdoor under snow rain what not, various parts were extracted out of it for other, acting planes, and that the same parts were installed in it again, borrowed from other planes. That's whenn the two wires could have been mixed up. Or that the contacts went off, during the take-off.
The plane went at 400km/hr speed during this "dancing" time.
In the Russian aviation blog someone, acquainted with the crew, said that the crew's impressions during the flight were that the every taking of the "wheel" resulted in the opposite direction. So they gave up on the wheel and flew the plane without.