Launch from Baikonur; landing 185 km northwest of Tselinograd.

The first planned hard-docking on the space station Salyut failed, because of a malfunction in the docking systems. The hard docking was needed for the enabling of electrical connections. The reason was a faulty mechanism on the Soyuz capsule, which was discovered after the following mission. Another problem of this mission was, that only rookies flew. The rules were changed, so that a rookie only could fly together with a veteran cosmonaut. Until the mission of Soyuz TM-19 this rules were not changed again.

The premature return to Earth was without additional more problems.