[1] The aircraft was performing flight MA-203 from Istanbul to Budapest with an intermediate stop in Bucharest, carrying 8 crew members and 45 passengers.

The captain, reportedly Péter Fejes, was the personal pilot and friend of János Kádár, the leader of the Hungarian People's Republic.

After skidding through the trees for 75 meters and disintegrating, the airliner crashed into a steep bank of a ditch, after which it rolled onto a field where it stopped and burned.

Ceaușescu himself, who arrived at the crash site by helicopter, later sent Kádár a telegram stating that the accident had occurred due to a failure of Soviet-made equipment, while the crew had fought for the lives of the passengers and the aircraft until the end.

Based on this telegram, the commission chairman ordered that the bodies of the deceased crew members be quickly retrieved from under the wreckage and handed over to the Hungarian authorities, even though this contradicted international rules for investigating air accidents.

Avtomanov) could only arrive at the crash site on 27 September, due to bureaucratic delays, six days after the incident and after the victims' funerals had taken place.

Upon the first playback, Soviet representatives concluded that there had been no equipment failure, as the conversation in the cockpit was normal for almost the entire time, with discussions about the new uniform in the airline.

[4] According to the conclusion reached by Soviet experts, the aircraft's technical condition was fully operational, and all systems were functioning normally, with the accident resulting from the crew's poor performance.

The Romanian side accepted this conclusion, although it contradicted Ceaușescu’s telegram to Kádár, which blamed Soviet equipment and praised the crew as heroes.

According to Hungarian specialists, an unintended deployment of spoilers occurred during the descent, causing the airliner to continue descending below a safe altitude.

The Soviet Union's Ministry of Civil Aviation refused to accept the conclusion that the crash of the Hungarian aircraft was due to crew error.

The leaders of the Gromov Flight Research Institute and the Tupolev Design Bureau fully agreed with the Soviet commission's conclusion.