On the night of 26 September 1960, the aircraft operating the flight, a Vickers Viscount, crashed near Moscow while on its approach to land, killing 31 of the 37 passengers and crew on board.

[1] The aircraft had first flown on 10 February 1960 and had been delivered new to Austrian Airlines about two weeks later, seven months before the crash.

[2] The investigation determined that the crew thought that the aircraft was higher than it was and that it flew into trees during its approach and crashed.

The left altimeter's barometric sub-scale had been set to a pressure that would have resulted in it reading zero feet on the ground at Sheremetyevo.

However, the sub-scale on the copilot's altimeter was set to a pressure that would have resulted in it reading the airport's height above mean sea level when on the ground at Sheremetyevo.