Saratov Airlines Flight 703

Saratov Airlines Flight 703 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Moscow to Orsk Airport in Russia that crashed shortly after take-off from Moscow Domodedovo Airport on 11 February 2018 in Stepanovskoye, Ramensky District. The Antonov An-148-100B serving the flight suddenly dived while en route to its destination, killing all 71 people on board. It was the deadliest crash involving the Antonov An-148 and the first commercial passenger flight crash involving the type.

The Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), which was responsible for the investigation of the crash, published the final report in 2019. They concluded that the crash was caused by multiple factors. The crews had decided not to turn on the pitot heaters even though the weather was conducive for icing. As the aircraft climbed, all three pitot tubes became blocked by ice, resulting in conflicting airspeed indications. The captain then quickly became fixated on resolving the issue and developed tunnel vision as he was unable to determine which reading was correct. Overwhelmed, he ignored warnings from his co-pilot, continued making a nose-down input, and caused the aircraft to dive and crash at high speed.

Flight history

Flight 703 was a regularly scheduled domestic passenger service from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport to Orsk Airport in Orsk, a city near the border to Kazakhstan and one of the most important industrial cities in Orenburg Oblast. The flight was operated by Russian regional carrier Saratov Airlines. At the time, it was the only flight from the Russian capital to Orsk. On 11 February 2018, the flight would be operated by one of the airlines' Antonov An-148 fleet, the RA-61704. The scheduled departure time from Moscow was 14:00.

Prior to the flight to Orsk, the aircraft was flown for a service flight from Saratov to Moscow, operating as Flight 760. Among the deadheading crew were Captain Gubanov and the rest of the cabin crew members, while First Officer Gambaryan would later catch up in Moscow. The aircraft arrived in Moscow at 10:02 a.m., arriving 5 hours late from its scheduled arrival due to delays during flight preparations in Saratov.

Crash

The aircraft was nearly reaching an altitude of 1,900 meters when the indicated airspeed on Captain Gubanov's display, which had been showing the reading from the standby probe, had dramatically fallen steeply from 480 km/h to around 300 km/h. First Officer Gambaryan's probe had also showed a significantly decreasing airspeed, from 440 km/h to 400 km/h. The airspeed continued to drop, causing Captain Gubanov to freak out. He then immediately put the aircraft into a descent by pitching the nose down again, this time at 16 degrees. First Officer Gambaryan, confused by Gubanov's abrupt input, asked him again on why he put the aircraft into a descent since the aircraft was flying normally, causing Gubanov to snap back at him and told him to stop talking.

Few seconds later, the aircraft's fly-by-wire system declared complete failure on all airspeed readings and deemed all of them invalid. The last two surviving probes had differed on their readings, reaching a difference of 36 km/h. The system then reconfigured the aircraft: pitch sensitivity doubled and autonomous nose-down input. Meanwhile, Captain Gubanov saw that the indicated airspeed continued to drop, now reaching only 200 km/h. Panicked by the reading, he doubled down on the pitch, making a nose-down input of 30 degrees below the horizon. First Officer Gambaryan alerted Gubanov that the aircraft was rapidly losing altitude. Gubanov yelled at him, ignoring his warning.

As the aircraft came hurtling down at a speed of more than 50 m/s, the aircraft's ground-proximity warning system blared, warning the crew of their impending crash with terrain. Roughly at an altitude of 1,200 meters, First Officer Gambaryan decided to intervene by making a nose-up input, even though Captain Gubanov kept pushing the aircraft towards the ground. Gubanov, startled by his co-pilot's input, ordered him to stop making the input. The airspeed finally reached the overspeed limit, causing the alarm to blare again.

Gubanov continued to make nose-down inputs until the aircraft reached an altitude of 300 to 400 meters above the ground, at which point it broke through the cloud cover. As soon as it came through the base, both pilots saw the quickly approaching ground. Surprised, Captain Gubanov immediately made a full nose-up input on the control column, generating g-forces equivalent to 4.2 g. The input, however, was too late. With a speed of approximately 770 km/h, a nose pitch of 30 degrees, and a right bank angle of 25 degrees, the aircraft slammed onto the snowy ground in an open field near Stepanovskoye, at 14:27 local time (11:27 UTC), six minutes after take-off from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport. All 71 passengers and crews on board were killed instantly. The crash was caught by a surveillance camera in a nearby house. The footage showed that the aircraft slammed into the ground, and immediately burst into flames.