Azerbaijan Airlines said “external physical and technical interference” led to the plane crash in Kazakhstan in which 38 people died out of 67 on board.
On Christmas, the Embraer 190 aircraft operated by Azerbaijan Airlines, took off from Baku for Grozny in Russia’s Chechnya. The aircraft was ‘denied landing due to fog’ in Grozny and diverted far off the Caspian Sea, where it crashed in the Aktau city of Kazakhstan, killing 38 and 29 surviving the crash.
A day later, reporters emerged that a Russian surface-to-air missile may have caused the deadly crash, forcing the aircraft to limp off the Caspian Sea and then crashing in an open field. Reports say the missile was “accidentally fired” on the aircraft, a hypothesis the Kremlin has rejected and “warned against”.
An investigation is still underway but a pro-government Azerbaijani website, Caliber, cited unnamed officials in a report and said that a missile from a Pantsir-S air defence system downed the plane.
Videos from the crash site showed holes in the aircraft’s nose and damage from shrapnel from the missiles, an observation pointed out by military and aviation experts in foreign media reports such as the Wall Street Journal, Euronews and AFP.
Azerbaijan Airlines’ flight J28243 operates between Baku and Grozny, a city in Russia’s Chechnya that has been a target of Ukrainian drones and is a site defence heavily by anti-aircraft weapons such as surface-to-air missiles.
Online flight tracking website, FlightRadar24, earlier said the aircraft experienced strong GPS jamming but did not explain what led to it. The aircraft struggled to maintain an altitude for an hour, with its vertical speed data graph showing a steady altitude and then a sudden drop in height and fluctuations in its altitude before it crashed.
The Azerbaijan Airlines announced Friday that it will suspend flights to several Russian airports, citing potential flight safety risks.
Passenger’s Testimony
A passenger told Reuters that there was at least one loud bang as it approached Grozny. “I thought the plane was going to fall apart,” Subhonkul Rakhimov, one of the passengers, told Reuters from the hospital, adding that he had begun to recite prayers and prepare for the end after hearing the bang.
After the loud bang, the plane had acted strangely as if it was drunk, Rakhimov said. “It was as if it was drunk – not the same plane anymore,” he said.
Russia’s Response
While Russia says the investigation is underway, Reuters reported quoting four sources that Russian air defences had mistakenly shot it down.
Rosaviatsia, Russia’s aviation watchdog, said that the captain of the plane had been offered other airports at which to land, but had chosen Kazakhstan’s Aktau, Reuters reported.
The damage to the aircraft was reminiscent of the Malaysian Airlines MH17 which was shot down by Russian-backed forces with a Buk 9M38 surface-to-air missile in 2014 while flying over eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed onboard the Boeing-777 aircraft.