At 10:00 local time (05:00 UTC), as the aircraft was being pushed back and was starting its engines, a fire developed in the centre section of the fuselage, quickly spreading inside the passenger cabin.

Within four minutes, fire engines reached the Tupolev and started dousing the flames with foam, but were hampered by the presence of survivors near the aircraft.

Authorities in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug – Yugra had allocated руб 10,000,000 to assist the families of those injured in the accident.

[7] Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations stated that the initial investigations pointed towards an electrical short circuit being the cause of the fire, which started in the central area of the fuselage, ahead of the rear-mounted engines.

[9] In September 2011, the MAK released its final report in Russian, confirming that the probable cause of the fire was an arc occurring in an electric panel on the right side of the fuselage hosting the generator contactors.

Shortly after engine start, the crew connected the generators to the electrical network as usual, but the badly worn out contactors failed to operate properly, resulting in an abnormal circuit configuration that produced currents 10 to 20 times higher than their nominal values, giving rise to an electrical arc.