And here comes the inevitable hysterical speculation from internet detectives who haven't got the faintest idea about how aviation actually works. Hour after the crash and I've already seen posts about aerodynamic stalls, an engine on fire, windshear, downdraughts, loss of situational awareness, and the inevitable layman masquerading as knowledgable expert analysis of FlightRadar24 ADS-B data. Jesus fucking Christ. Won't be long before attention seekers like Richard Quest will be giving interviews on CNN.

I am an Airline Pilot, I fly the A320. From the FR24 data I've seen, the aircraft conducted a missed approach and then took up the hold for two hours. This is perfectly normal when weather conditions are below minimums and aircraft hold and wait for it to clear up before shooting another approach.

At the time of the crash the weather was overcast at roughly 1400ft, visibility less than 5km, Showers of rain, strong westerly winds gusting up to 40 knots.

Rostov on Don has a single runway, 22/04. With the westerly wind I assume the aircraft was trying to land on Runway 22. This runway has an ILS approach procedure.

http://opennav.com/pdf/URRR/ad2-rus-urrr-098.pdf

I suspect the flight crew were not able to get visual sight of the runway by decision height and were forced to go around, fly the missed approach, and then take up the hold for two hours waiting for the cloud base/visibility to lift.

What actually caused the accident to later happen is simply speculation and we simply must wait for the Russian govt to analyse the FDR/CVR. No doubt the shit rags like the Daily Mail will be running hysterical stories about terrorism tomorrow though, and Reddit will be full of experts who've already decided what happened and will plaster their ill-informed opinions as fact all over /r/worldnews.