Utair airline official statement:
B737-800 VQ-BJI during flight UT579 Moscow-Sochi, departed the runway after landing. Aircraft ended up in a river, and as a result, main landing gear and wings were destroyed. Left engine caught on fire. There were 164 people on board and 6 cabin crew/pilots. Airport firefighter brigade stopped the fire, and people were successfully evacuated.


Самолет Boeing 737-800 с бортовым номером VQ-BJI, следующий рейсом UT579 Москва - Сочи, после посадки выкатился за пределы взлетно-посадочной полосы. Воздушное судно скатилось в русло реки, в результате чего разрушились стойки шасси и крыло, произошло возгорание левого двигателя. На борту самолета находилось 164 пассажира и 6 членов экипажа. Пожарные расчеты аэропорта Сочи потушили возгорание, людей эвакуировали. Жертв нет. Авиакомпания и авиационные власти начали расследование причин случившегося.
https://www.utair.ru/about/news/info...-moskva-sochi/

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.gmf...6bbf80003.jpeg

Credit TASS

Landed in the WOCL (0300 local time). Runway is 2900m/9500 ft. Runway was wet, there were thunderstorms and windshear was given in the metar.
Pure speculation of course, it resembles the DHL overrun at bergamo in 2016. https://aviation-safety.net/database...0805-0&lang=nl

Of course I’m sure what you actually meant to say is that it resembles the ASL Airlines Hungary overrun at BGY.
(Yes it was doing flights under contract for DHL at the time....)

It also resembles the AA 737 overrun at Kingston.

Yet another 737 goes off piste. I know there is a lot of them, but as a type it is truly not underrepresented in this category of events.

maybe... Do you have some actual numbers to back this?

As usual for Sochi.

Apparently ths was the third attempt, after 2 missed approaches.

Indeed - the 738 can usually be comfortably brought to a stop within around 1000m once on the ground, and operates daily into many airports with 1000m less to play with than Sochi, so there must be far more at play here.

-800’s does seem to show up more often when it comes to overruns.
Why? I has a high approach speed. You need to land it where it is supposed to be landed, at the correct speed, or it will eat runway like few other aircraft. Under adverse conditions you need to maintain positive stopping efford all the way until it stops. If you use autobrakes and disconnect them, the system will need time to start braking again if you brake manually. This is really an issue on contaminated runways.
If you use high reverse and unreverse quickly, you will get positive thrust when the reversers stow.
An maybe it is flown by a lot of P2F and low experienced pilots? I flew with one of our new, low hour pilots. Flying is so easy, he said. Well, yes, AP B CMD, push som buttons, and you can fly from A to B in LNAV/VNAV. Easy!
But landing 60 something tons of 737 on a contaminated runway in adverse weather conditions is a difficult as it always has been.
The flat attitude on approach with the -800 make it very easy to end up high when you get close to the runway. The tendency is to raise the nose a bit to get into a more familiar «nose high»attitude. I still do this from time to time and need to maintain forward pressure to get back on profile.
I am never shy about using AB 3 on a dry runway, or max on a contaminated runway.
I also fly -700. Easy aircraft compared to the -800.

I treat the -800 with the respect it deserves and have never had any close calls, despite flying it into some really interesting places with limited runway lengths and bad weather.

yes, it’s open.

Re # 9 - 11. Not to drift too far from the thread, nor A vs B; the FAA doc ‘Normal Operational Landing Performance’ (http://www.tc.faa.gov/its/worldpac/techrpt/ar077.pdf) illustrates how similar aircraft can have different performance capabilities for given situations. This reinforces the need to know and understand the implications of aircraft operating performance, and how to adjust operations for different landing conditions.

Relevant to this accident might be Figs 20 / 21, ‘difference in speeds at the threshold’, “The difference in the actual speed and the reference speed over the threshold has a strong influence on the airborne distance.”
And Fig 31 ’influence of autobrake setting’, particularly if normal values for 737 are markedly different from other types, and similarly from Fig 32 for wet conditions where one aircraft type has a greater deviation from the norm.

Irrespective of the aircraft type, the weakest link may still be the human in judging the conditions and adapting for them, particularly where there are differences in safety margin; this may require more skilful judgement and knowledge, and greater adaptation from the norm in order to retain an adequate safety margin.

This view should not conclude ‘crew error’, but is an opportunity to consider the wider human factors in the event. Two previous approaches were discontinued; apparently good awareness, judgement, and decisions for the conditions, thus what factors in the third approach changed this process.