On 14 September 2008, the aircraft operating the flight crashed on approach to Perm International Airport at 5:10 local time (UTC+06).

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.

[4] 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.

[11] According to an interview given by the air traffic controller shortly after the disaster, the crew did not respond correctly to ATC commands: after going around, it turned eastward instead of westward.

Investigator Vladimir Markin said that "there were 82 passengers plus a baby and 5 crew on board, and by preliminary information, they are all dead as the airplane fell into a ravine near the city limits."

The airline stated, "it pledged to pay compensation on obligatory accident insurance in full, which would make up to 2 million rubles per victim."

The crash damaged and shut down a section of the Trans-Siberian Railway; rail traffic was temporarily re-routed via Chusovaya station and was restored by the evening of 14 September.

[7] However, the low clouds (at 240 metres (790 ft)) must have prevented any witnesses from seeing the plane for more than a few seconds and the report was subsequently discounted by the accident enquiry (see below).

[28] As the aircraft was registered in Bermuda, that government was represented by the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch, with two senior inspectors sent to participate under the Memorandum of Agreement.

[29] The engines were made in France, so that state was represented by the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA).

[17] The final investigation report stated the following reasons for the crash:[6][17][31][32] On 1 October 2008, the mother of a 27-year-old female passenger who died in the accident sued Aeroflot and Moskva Insurance Company for 7.7 million rubles (approximately US$300,000) in punitive damages.

Irek Birbov, the air traffic controller on duty at the time of the accident, said that on final approach the aircraft was too far right of the localizer.