On 11 February 2018, the aircraft serving the flight, an Antonov An-148-100B, crashed shortly after take-off, killing all 71 people on board – 65 passengers and six crew members.

Moments before the crash, Flight 703 had gained an altitude of 1,800 metres (5,900 ft) and an airspeed of 600 kilometres per hour (320 kn; 370 mph).

[2][5] According to a source inside the investigation, a few minutes before the crash the pilot of the aircraft told air traffic controllers about a malfunction, and that he planned to make an emergency landing at Zhukovsky.

[8] The Russian prosecutor's office launched criminal proceedings for suspected violations of air traffic safety rules.

It had been involved in two previous minor incidents in service; an engine was shut down on 28 July 2013 after it surged in flight, and it suffered a nose wheel failure on take-off on 23 August 2013.

Within the first few hours of the investigation, the Ministry of Transport announced two theories regarding the crash – weather conditions and human factors.

Officials stated that the radius of the crash site area was about one kilometer (0.62 miles), which added suspicion that the aircraft possibly had disintegrated in mid-flight.

The data also showed that the aircraft was under manual control when it pitched nose down some 30° below the horizontal and remained in that attitude until it impacted the ground.

[17] On 27 June 2019, the IAC reported that the crash, during climb in instrument meteorological conditions, was caused by the crew's erroneous reactions to unreliable airspeed indications caused by ice blockages of all three pitot probes, which led to the loss of control of the aircraft's flight dynamics resulting in a dive and collision with the ground.

[28][29] The head of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Maxim Topilin, stated that all relatives of the victims would be given 2 million rubles (about US$35,000) each.

[citation needed] President Vladimir Putin cancelled his planned trip to Sochi in response to the disaster.