It actually reminds me of the 2 A300 crashes (Taipei and Nagoya maybe) that resulted from the crew fighting the autopilot after engaging (at least on one occasion inadvertently) GA mode on short final.

They kept pushing on the column as the AP wound in nose-up trim. When the AP finally disconnected, the trim setting could not be overcome and the aircraft went near-vertical before crashing with little forward speed on/near the runway.

I think the airline involved was China Airlines.

Perhaps a similar scenario happened on this occasion. I feel the flap thing is a red herring. I also don't think the rudder hardover theory carries much weight - Boeing's interim fix was to mandate a reduction in speed; and as this crash happened at or near final approach speed it didn't have the basic elements that the hardover accidents did.

Speed on impact
 

It seems to be hitting the ground at 0.08 in the RT video, first appearing about 5 aircraft lengths back at 0.04, assuming that the fainter trailing light is the lit fin, and the ground position comes from the location of the flash on impact. That's only covering about 150m in 4s, so it's not hitting very fast: about 80 knots.

[Added note 18:00UT on 19th: there are subsequent suggestions that the RT video is slowed to 1/4 speed. This seems a bit odd given the pair of strobe flashes seen in the 4s to impact, but strobes can be aliased to the video rate. A quarter speed video would mean a much faster ~320kt almost-vertical impact, that tallies with the reported impact speed from the MAK in post 124.]

Pointing nose down from stationary, a free falling slippery shape will hit the ground from 150m up in just over 5 seconds, although you would see it accelerate.

I would bet that the video is foreshortened, and there's a significant unseen line-of-sight component to the speed in the video.

Caveat: for the Red Wings Tu 204 crash my video time/speed counting was worse than useless.

In my opinion it could be anywhere 80-120 kts since it is so hard to estimate the exact length of the aircraft from this video. Where the tail is it is obvious but the rest is hard to judge.

Why the huge fireball anyway? How much contingency fuel does this flight normally carry? Just wondering.

The descent looks near vertical from the camera perspective. I am thinking though it was traveling away from the camera also, so not quite vertical. I agree with the commenter who claimed extreme banking (near 90 deg).

My accident investigation experience is with smaller jets, but from the degree of fragmentation, I'd be inclined to offer up something in the vicinity of 200-250 knots at impact.

The explosion could easily account for the fragmentation, the speed is probably secondary here.

Plenty of fuel left (say 1- 4 t.) to cause such a fireball.

first off, any judgement of speed is GROUND speed and not airspeed.

second, flying an airplane is hard, at least its hard to do well

What explosion? All I see is a big fireball.

Explosions cause shock waves. Do you see evidence of that?

I see (even larger) pieces of aircraft flying apart, that's plenty. It is a rather poor video anyway I doubt you would see shock waves. But what's even more important your 200-250 kts can't be supported by the geometrical velocities observed in the video, not even assuming worst case for errors (post #86 above).

It was reported by RBC (russian business/news TV station) that the company had some financial problems and they were fueling up their AC in DME(Moscow) where they were still allowed to do that.
So, they fuel up tanks in order to carry fuel back to kazan instead of simply fueling AC at Kazan. That might explain long post crash fire..

Anyway does anyone still remember China Airlines CI676 at Taipei - the A300 botched go-around accident?

Online Report

flight path diagram

Russian aviation is still the wild west. Too many airlines flying junk and operating on a shoe string, flown by cowboys in total disregard of good operating practices or even the most basic common sense.

How many accidents will it take before the root causes are addressed ?

There is another possibility other than mechanical failure or incorrect use of the slats/flaps etc that can happen to a perfectly serviceable aircraft:

The video looks from my previous experience as though the crew may have succumbed to somatographic illusion during a severe go around manoeuvre. The angle and speed of the final seconds would result from this effect.

A similar event happened in this report (link). Look at page 43 of the report (under somatographic illusion) and the FDR data. The false climb sensation experienced by the pilot resulted in a steep dive that was only identified upon breaking out of the cloud into visual conditions. This was too late to recover the dive.

Again, I understand that this is only speculation. I am only trying to include that there is a possibility that is not caused by a wrongly configured aircraft, broken component or airport/approach aid failures. These illusions can be overpowering in their effect on the pilot, and a recognition of them often only occurs when VMC is re-established, which in this scenario would have been unlikely. The basic principle of 'trust your instruments' can be easily disregarded during high stress situations.

I saw another video today on NBC tv...wow...maybe the stall scenario is right...

I do remember that cargo 747 that stalled, it had some rotation to it...but this russian plane is NOSE DOWN like a lawn dart.

Of course, there were number of similar accidents. Flash Airlines flight 604 in 2004 is another good example.

This was an example of spatial disorientation for sure, but slightly different from the false climb effect that can occur from a rapid increase in pitch followed by a sudden control input to check the increase in pitch attitude. At this point the pilot thinks that the aircraft is going into a loop and pushing forward on the stick will actually exacerbate the situation initially as the difference in pilot-perceived aircraft attitude versus the actual aircraft attitude diverges further.

Heart attack
 

Could have suffered a heart attack and slumped against the control ??

olasek, you're assuming the video is being shown 'real time'. I see various artifacts in the video that suggest it's not - that it's been slowed down.

As noted, the video quality is poor enough that it's very difficult to be sure, but I certainly wouldn't put money on that video being shown at the actual event speed.

Attitude at time of crash consistent with stall => dive, as in the Bagram accident and the Airbus accidents at Nagoya and Taipei.

Won't be surprised if the sequence turns out to be something like this (but with progression to a full stall and then dive):

http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources...9%20G-THOF.pdf

There's a full frame version of the video which clearly indicates that it's at quarter speed.