Survivors have shared the terrifying moment Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 was diverted from its destination of Grozny and then struck three times.
Two passengers and one crew member who survived told Reuters that they heard at least one loud bang as the plane approached its original destination of Grozny in southern Russia.
"After the bang... I thought the plane was going to fall apart," Subhonkul Rakhimov, one of the passengers, told Reuters from hospital. "It was obvious that the plane had been damaged in some way."
Another passenger, Vafa Shabanova, told Reuters, "I was very scared." She added that there was a second bang and that she was told by a flight attendant to move to the back of the plane.
Both passengers said there appeared to be a problem with the oxygen levels in the cabin after the bang.
Flight attendant Zulfugar Asadov said landing was denied in Grozny due to fog, so the pilot circled, at which point there were bangs outside the aircraft. "The pilot had just lifted the plane up when I heard a bang from the left wing. There were three bangs," he said.
These survivor testimonies further support a statement from the White House suggesting initial indications that the aircraft might have been shot down by Russian air defence systems.
Russia’s President apologised to Azerbaijan’s President on Saturday, attributing the accident to Russian air defence operations targeting Ukrainian drones. He confirmed that the Azerbaijani aircraft had repeatedly attempted to land at Grozny.
Sky News produced the clip below, showing scenes from the accident as well as footage from inside the plane that highlights the physical damage.
The Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer ERJ-190, registration 4K-AZ65, was performing flight J2-8243 from Baku (Azerbaijan) to Grozny (Russia) with 62 passengers and 5 crew members when it diverted from Grozny to Aktau (Kazakhstan) due to weather conditions.
The aircraft subsequently attempted to divert to Makhachkala (Russia) but aborted its approach due to fog before returning to Aktau. While attempting an emergency landing at Aktau’s runway 11 at 11:28 local time, approximately an hour after aborting the approach to Grozny, the plane lost height while turning onto its final approach with its landing gear down. It impacted the ground short of the runway in a nose-down attitude and caught fire. Rescue services managed to save 29 people, including all cabin crew, while tragically, 38 bodies, including both flight crew, were recovered.
The airline reported that the passengers included 37 Azerbaijani, 16 Russian, 6 Kazakh, and 3 Kyrgyz citizens.
The moment of impact was captured on video.
Kazakhstan’s Vice Minister of Transport explained that the aircraft had made two turns in the airport area after entering Kazakh airspace and crashed during a third turn. Kazakhstan’s Ministry for Emergency Situations reported that the airport had been informed at 11:00 local time of the incoming emergency. By 11:30, the aircraft had impacted the ground, and firefighters contained the blaze by 11:45, extinguishing it entirely by 12:05. By 14:10, 29 survivors had been transported to hospitals, and rescuers, along with investigators from Azerbaijan, had reached Aktau.
The head of Russia's civil aviation agency stated on Friday that Ukrainian drones were attacking the city of Grozny as the plane was trying to land.
Note: According to the Aviation Herald, due to GPS jamming and spoofing in the region, existing radar data could not reliably reconstruct the aircraft’s flight path or the exact nature of its issues.
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