Tonight, a Christmas disaster in the skies, a passenger plane bound for Russia goes down.

The terrifying crash caught on camera.

Dozens dead, but in the fiery aftermath, there were survivors, including children.

How they managed to make it out alive.

Why it was rerouted from its original flight plan, and what officials are saying about what could have caused that plane to go down.

Winter blast out west, millions on alert for dangerously high winds, floods, and several feet of snow.

And the new details on that massive wave that ripped apart the Santa Cruz wharf, sending workers

into the water. Avalanche survival story. Two brothers snowmobiling in the Utah backcountry when

they were swept away. One completely buried. I felt like you were in a washing machine just tumbled.

The life-saving tool one brother used to get the other route just in time. The tragic find on a

Christmas Eve flight from Chicago to Hawaii.

And Apple about to hit a major milestone.

Could have become the first four trillion dollar company.

The tech giants new splash into artificial intelligence and what it wants you to bring inside your home.

And if all you wanted was a hippopotamus for Christmas, well, guess what?

You got it.

This is NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.

And good evening. I'm Morgan Chesky in for Lester. We begin tonight with the growing investigation into a deadly plane crash on a commercial flight bound for Russia and how dozens on board somehow survived.

Witnesses capturing the terrifying moments on cell phone video.

Showing the Embraeer 190 passenger jet's rapid descent in Kazakhstan

followed mere seconds later by a fiery impact.

The flight departing from Azerbaijan was bound for the Russian city of Grozny,

...