Not control line but WOW...

[Mike Griffin]

WOW... just WOW....  Skip to the one minute mark..that is about where it happens. Descent rate is way to steep. 

[Jared Hays]

Wow

[Dan McEntee]

   I don't know about too steep or not. The nose wheel never touched down, and it appeared to pogo stick hope right back into the air as the nose broke off right behind the wing leading edge??  Really strange. I would question the quality control at the factory when it was assembled! Didn't really seem to hit that hard?? 
   Type at you later,
     Dan McEntee

[Mike Griffin]

Hi Dan, I am certainly not a structural engineer but it looks like the aircraft hit way to hard.  I have landed in some bad weather conditions but nothing like that.  You are right about the nose wheel, it never touched down. 

Mike

[Randy Cuberly]

It looked to me like there was no attempt to flare on the approach.  Perhaps there was a failure on the automatic landing approach system.  Visibility was only fair or so it appeared. 

I agree that it didn't look like the aircraft hit hard enough to cause such a catastrophic failure.  Another possibility is that the airplane was over stressed at some point during the flight or even a previous flight or landing, and not properly serviced.

Randy Cuberly

[Mark Mc]

Man!  At first I thought, "Okay, bad but maybe survivable for the pilot deck."  Then when the rest came down on what appeared to be where the nose was...

[Norm Faith Jr.]

Crew of four...two survived. If you listen real close, you can hear the engines spooling down after the crash. Must be a stout airframe, at least where the engines are located. Horrible weather, probably a do or die situation to get it on the ground or run it out of fuel.

[Dave Hull]

Reports stated it was a TU-22M3--to us, a Backfire bomber/recce plane. Swingwing, and supersonic capable. That is a huge airplane, almost 2/3rds the size of a B-1B. And notably, it is an Air Force type plane. A carrier plane is stressed to land without flaring at up to a design descent rate. If you are used to looking at carrier landings, then this one doesn't seem too abnormal.

It looked like they suffered a tailstrike. If they did, then it would be more likely that it was mishandling by the crew or a blind approach instrumentation problem that caused the breakup.

One source was reporting it was a 30 year old airframe. The last one off the line would be 22 years old if published records are correct. That kind of detail may--or may not--be true, and may not really be relevant. Depends on the design life and maintenance. It was notoriously bad during the Soviet years. The Russians have been upgrading these recently. The M3 is current, I believe, and they plan to do a bunch of them.

Really lousy weather. Not just heavy fog and low visibility--with all that snow on the ground there would be little to no contrast. I can't imagine attempting this, but professional pilots do. These aircraft have a recent history of overrunning runways. On a snow and ice covered runway, you don't flare and tippy-toe, you plant it and try to keep it from overrunning. Still, it looked like the pilot rotated, but had not arrested the descent at all.

[john e. holliday]

I am surprised there were survivers.  It does look like the pilot came down a little fast considering the visability.   

[Gary Dowler]

I am surprised there were survivers.  It does look like the pilot came down a little fast considering the visability.   

Someone thought tail strike, but it appears the tail never touched the ground. Looks like a very rapid sink rate, resulting in a very hard landing on the mains only, causing the fuselage to fail at the LE. This fell nose down while the fuselage rebounded up and cartwheeled over. Looked like the nose section was to the right of the fuselage impact point. This would explain how 2 men survived.
Doubtless the poos visibility made them unaware of how close they were to the ground until it was too late to react.

Gary

[Chad Hill]

Approach lights inop or obscured, same for runway lights, ILS...who knows? Poor vis, low ceiling, icing conditions, contaminated runway, windy and dark. Depth perception absolutely sucks under these conditions. High task saturation in cockpit...bingo fuel? All this rolled together is a recipe for disaster. Looks like a hard landing with a tailstrike to me.