It was carrying industrial parts from Moscow to Khabarovsk with several intermediate stops in between, however it caught fire shortly after takeoff, resulting in a fatal accident.

[1] The pilots were Robert Fritsevich Bernovsky and Viktor Andrekov, with Vladimir Izmailov Prokopevich serving as the flight's radio operator.

Weather conditions at the time were poor with just four kilometers of visibility accompanied by snow, haze, and low cloud cover.

The aircraft had reached an altitude of just two hundred meters and was in the air for less than two minutes when an in-flight fire forced the pilots to attempt an emergency landing on a snow-covered field.

The bodies of Flight 5003's crew were severely burned and the wreckage was so heavily damaged that determining the exact cause of the fire was not possible, though investigators believe it was the result of flammable cargo material, not the aircraft's fuel system.