For the love of god!!! The 2 hours holding is standard FDB operations. We are routinely sent to somewhere we knew we couldn't get into with little prospect of being able to get into it with boatloads of fuel and told give it a go. If you didn't then you came under the scrutiny of the chief pilot who had a penchant for bullying crew and making careers untenable.
9/10 times we would do just that fly 3/4/5hrs get their hold have a look try again if necessary and more times that not we would divert.
The route they were flying was not one that more senior pilots would ever pick as it is known for crap weather, is captain only landing and its dark o'clock. It was just one of those places that you hoped to not get on your roster and if you did and if you couldn't swap it then you hoped you had one of those nights where there was a break in the crap weather and you could get in. If not you rocked up with extra stuff as you knew you could easily end up in a hotel.
FDB heap commercial pressure on crews way past the normal anyone else but if you have your family stuck in the middle east you have a choice do what they ask be it carry lithium batteries, operate outside of FTLs, ignore assaults on crew etc or loose your job and possibly your career.
It wasn't that we didn't know that but most of us just took the money and hoped to not be the crew of FZ981 before we got either enough money/hours/experience in LHS, etc to move to somewhere else.
The chief pilots favourite saying is "if you don't like it leave!" it was his solution to every problem given and the culture of fear has eroded the culture of safety to such an extent that most pilots were unlikely torpor anything but the most serious incidents as they knew they were simply raising their heads above the parapet.
Re the numerous posts from experts on here who have not operated in the Middle east, who have not flown in Russian airspace and who do not know anything about HGS/HUD ops suggest you use the two ears more than the one mouth and though of course you are interested but your conjecture does nothing to help do anything other than muddy the waters.
FDB never ever do coupled approaches. All CAT3a, CAT2 and CAT1 are manually flown to the ground. All low vis is hand flown. All low vis is hand flown on the HGS. All approaches in Russia are flown on QNH we have LIDO tables with a conversion table on EVRY Plate.
If you find a pilot in FZ unfamiliar with flying in metres and getting wind in metres per second then they are very very new indeed. There would have been little to no confusion in the crews mind about altimeter settings, when to set or change and wind in mps as it is an almost every day occurrence in Russia and we have/had 18 routes to Russia which is pretty significant.
What happened, I have a guess the same as any other pilot and more so with other 737 pilots and even more so with 737NG pilots. The factors are facts and everything else at this stage is clearly conjecture. Did they make and error in the GA, was their catastrophic failure of something or other, was it an act of god? That will all come out pretty soon.
What isn't conjecture however is that colleagues are dead and the weather was crap on departure, estimated to be crap at ETA, estimated to be crap until way past the point of full tanks and they left with the FDB standard cunning plan of well maybe it will be okay. If you want a fact it is that not many airlines would consider that normal they would simply wait at base until it was at least predicted to be likely and then leave.
FZ don't do that why? ask the Chief Pilot. He as an uber pilot and uber human knows better than everyone else he evens knows that black is in fact white and can prove it when called upon to do so and is above the law as demonstrated on innumerous occasions.
So yes whilst of course factors such as starting a new job etc would have been a factor the reality is FDB take 7 days minimum to sort your visa out when you leave and frequently take longer because we the crew do not matter, were not humans are simply slaves to be abused at their whim so why would looking after us or our families matter. So yes these factors exist but lets be honest we have all heard the tape. They called the GA and did it so the why were they there and why wait so long is simple, that is what NCC demanded they do. Why because the Chief Pilot lets them do whatever they please and refuses to exert any control over what is directly his area of responsibility because nothing is important except his pay check.
I hope the money is worth it and I hope the families of the departed get to see him face to face, look him in the eye in the full knowledge of how he runs his ship.