Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363
Boeing 737-53A · Crashed during aborted landing following spatial disorientation
From Domodedovo International Airport (DME) to Kazan International Airport (KZN)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA14RA012
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Final · Interstate Aviation Committee final report
- Event fatalities
- 50 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 50
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Boeing 737-53A
- Flight
- U9363
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- VQ-BBN
- Operator
- Tatarstan Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- 50
- Route
- From Domodedovo International Airport (DME)To Kazan International Airport (KZN)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 129: Foreign
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Unknown or undetermined
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
- Organizational issues › Management
- Organizational issues › Support/oversight/monitoring
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight, operated by Tatarstan Airlines on behalf of Ak Bars Aero, from Moscow to Kazan, Russia. On 17 November 2013, at 19:24 local time (UTC+4), the Boeing 737-500 crashed during an aborted landing at Kazan International Airport, killing all 44 passengers and 6 crew members on board.
According to the official investigation report by the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), the crash was a result of pilot error, arising from a lack of skill to recover from an excessive nose-up attitude during a go-around procedure. The pilots' deficiencies were caused by a problem with the airline's safety management and a lack of regulatory oversight. One member of the commission filed an alternative opinion report, however, claiming that the commission had ignored the possible malfunction of the aircraft's elevator controls.
Background
The plane operating Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363, with the registration of VQ-BBN, had been built in the year 1990. This plane was previously leased from Bulgaria Air, the flag carrier airline of Bulgaria, in 2008, prior to which it had been leased by Euralair, Air France, Uganda Airlines, Rio Sul Airlines, and Blue Air.
Accident
Flight 363 took off from Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow at 6:25 p.m. local time, destined for Kazan International Airport, some 800 km east of Moscow.
While on final approach to Kazan International Airport, the crew initiated a go-around due to an unstable approach but crashed onto the runway in a 75-degree-nose-down attitude, at a speed of 242 kn moments later and exploded upon impact with the ground. A second explosion occurred 40 seconds after impact. One of the airport's surveillance cameras caught the crash on video. All 44 passengers and 6 crew members were killed; there were no casualties on the ground. High winds and cloudy conditions were reported at the airport at the time of the crash.
The Kazan International Airport was kept closed for about 24 hours, serving only transit flights, before it was fully reopened on 18 November.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The IAC launched an investigation into the crash and arrived at the site on 18 November. Both flight recorders, the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), were recovered from the wreckage. The Tatarstan Transport Prosecution Office opened a criminal investigation into the crash. The American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) dispatched a team of investigators to the crash site.
On 19 November, Aksan Giniyatullin, the director of Tatarstan Airlines, declared that although the cockpit crew was experienced, the captain of the airliner may have lacked experience performing a go-around maneuver. Moments before the crash the pilot informed the control tower that the aircraft was not properly configured for landing and initiated a go-around, before plunging into the ground as if it had stalled. Investigators said the possible causes of the accident included technical malfunction as well as pilot error.
On 22 November, the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) announced they had joined the investigation and dispatched investigators to Kazan.
Final report
On 24 December 2015, the IAC released their final report stating that the crash was caused by an under-qualified crew who lacked the skills to recover from an excessive nose up attitude during a go-around procedure. The go-around was necessitated by a positional error in the navigation system—a map drift. The pilots' deficiencies were caused by lack of airline safety management and lack of regulators' oversight.
According to the final report, during the final approach the crew initiated a go-around, but being under high workload, which possibly caused a "tunnel vision effect", they did not perceive warning messages related to auto-pilot disconnection. When the plane climbed to 700 m, its pitch angle reached 25 degrees and the airspeed dropped to 230 km/h. At that moment the captain, who had not performed a go-around outside of training, moved the yoke, pitching nose down, which stopped the climb and started a descent and an increase in the aircraft's airspeed. After reaching the altitude of 700 m, the aircraft started a steep nosedive, with the pitch angle reaching −75° on ground impact. The plane crashed on the airport's runway with a speed exceeding 450 km/h. The time from the start of the go-around maneuver until the impact was about 45 seconds, including 20 seconds of descent.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363” (revision 1372749758, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
Sources
Wikipedia article: Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363
- Revision
- 1372749758 · 2026-09-02 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q15198571
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA14RA012
- Event ID
- 20131117X13904
- Case number
- DCA14RA012
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363" (page 41108619, revision 1372749758); merged with NTSB case DCA14RA012 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date; matches the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC / MAK), Air Accident Investigation Commission final report
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record DCA14RA012
- Operation
- airline flight number in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities; matches the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC / MAK), Air Accident Investigation Commission final report
- Ground fatalities
- Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC / MAK), Air Accident Investigation Commission final report
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363" and NTSB case DCA14RA012, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- Checked against the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC / MAK), Air Accident Investigation Commission final report on 2026-09-18. The report states the same date, flight number, fatalities, registration, operator, departure, destination, damage and type of operation. Taken from the report: ground fatalities. Not checked: place, crash-site coordinates and aircraft type.