B-738 Crash in Russia Rostov-on-Don

[Old King Coal]

For what it's worth, I happened to find myself in the (B738) sim today and therein, with some time to spare at the end of the session, I endeavoured to reproduce one likely go-around scenario which that crew might have encountered,... and let's just say that my (fairly benign) experiment ended up with the sim entering a steep dive (>40º nose down), with the speed increasing rapidly (even with the thrust levers closed, nudging 270 Kts when we hit the ground), and all the while I had the control column buried hard back in to my (admittedly a fairly expanded) waistline whilst trying to get the nose to come up, and during which I was pulling as hard as I could on the yoke, with both arms (and I'm not exactly weak), but which didn't work (i.e. the nose would not come up, even with full aft control column)... the resultant outcome of which was that we speared into the ground in an almost uncannily similar manner. It was certainly sobering stuff, and, yes, there were a couple of things I maybe could have done to get the nose-up (but, for the sake of the experiment, I didn't... veritably trying to emulate a possibly overwhelmed and tired / fatigued crew). In summary, the B737 can be a real handful in a go-around and, imho & experience, the two engine go-around has typically been badly taught & executed in every airline that I've ever been in (and I've been in more than a few!)... and I'd go so far as to say that the 2x engined go-around on the B737 is typically the most f'ked-up manoeuvre of all possible manoeuvres; though it shouldn't be, but it often is!