page_title: Aeroflot Flight 821
section_title: Investigation
hierarchical_section_title: Aeroflot Flight 821 / Investigation
caption_attribution_description: English: Aeroflot Nold Flight 821 crash site
context_page_description: Aeroflot Flight 821 was a scheduled passenger flight operated by Aeroflot-Nord in a service agreement with Aeroflot and as its subsidiary. On 14 September 2008, the aircraft operating the flight crashed on approach to Perm International Airport at 5:10 local time. All 82 passengers and 6 crew members were killed. Among the passengers who were killed was Russian Colonel General Gennady Troshev formerly the commander of the North Caucasus Military District during the Second Chechen War and adviser to the President of Russia. A section of the Trans-Siberian Railway was damaged by the crash. Flight 821 is the deadliest accident involving a Boeing 737-500, surpassing the 1993 crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 733, and was the second-deadliest aviation incident in 2008, behind Spanair Flight 5022.
  The primary cause of the crash was that both pilots had lost spatial orientation due to their inexperience with the Western type of attitude indicator on the aircraft. Lack of adequate rest, poor crew resource management, and alcohol consumption by the captain also contributed to the accident.
context_section_description: Russia's Air Accident Investigation Commission of the Interstate Aviation Committee led the investigation, with US assistance from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Authority, and Boeing. As the aircraft was registered in Bermuda, that government was represented by the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch, with two senior inspectors sent to participate under the Memorandum of Agreement. The AAIB team had representatives from the Bermudian Department of Civil Aviation as advisors. The engines were made in France, so that state was represented by the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA).
  According to the data in flight recorders, the engines did not catch fire and continued working until the impact. The latest official reports are published in Russian on the Air Accident Investigation Commission website. An English translation of the final report is available at the United Kingdom Air Accidents Investigation Branch website; the AAIB states that it is not an official English translation.
  The final investigation report stated the following reasons for the crash:
  The immediate cause of the accident was the loss of spatial orientation by the crew and chiefly by the Captain who was piloting the aircraft during the landing phase. The plane banked left, overturned and went into a rapid descent. The loss of spatial orientation occurred in the night, while flying in the clouds, with autopilot and autothrottle switched off. Poor CRM and insufficient training for using the Western type of attitude indicators contributed to the accident. The pilots had previously flown Tupolev Tu-134 and Antonov An-2 with a different type of attitude indicator (where the bank angle is shown by the movements of an aircraft symbol, and the indicator's background does not turn left or right).
  Inadequate practices by Aeroflot-Nord in managing and operating the Boeing 737 aircraft.
  The aircraft had been flown for a long time with a throttle problem. The pilots had a higher workload because they had to operate the throttle levers for the left and right engines independently.
  Forensic examination found an unspecified amount of alcohol in the captain's tissue. He also did not have adequate rest before the flight.
caption: Aerial view of the crash site of Flight 821
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