Aeroflot Flight 821
Aerial view of the crash site of Flight 821 | |
| Accident | |
|---|---|
| Date | 14 September 2008 |
| Summary | Crashed following loss of control on approach after pilot intoxication |
| Site | Near Perm International Airport, Perm, Russia 57°58.255′N 56°12.632′E / 57.970917°N 56.210533°E |
| Aircraft | |
| VP-BKO, the aircraft involved in the accident, seen 3 months before the crash | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 737-505 |
| Operator | Aeroflot-Nord |
| IATA flight No. | SU821 |
| ICAO flight No. | AFL821 |
| Call sign | AEROFLOT 821 |
| Registration | VP-BKO |
| Flight origin | Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russia |
| Destination | Perm International Airport, Perm, Russia |
| Occupants | 88 |
| Passengers | 82 |
| Crew | 6 |
| Fatalities | 88 |
| Survivors | 0 |
Aeroflot-Nord Flight 821 was a scheduled domestic 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 (UTC+06). All 82 passengers and six crew members were killed. Among the passengers who were killed was Russian Colonel General Gennady Troshev, an adviser to the President of Russia who had been the commander of the North Caucasus Military District (including Chechnya) during the Second Chechen War. 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 accident of 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.
This air disaster led to Aeroflot-Nord rebranding as Nordavia, effective on 1 December 2009, and later to Smartavia in 2019.