On Wednesday, December 25, in the middle of Christmas, an Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) passenger plane, causing the death of at least 38 people and leaving only 29 survivorsaccording to official sources cited by EFE.
The flight, from Baku, requested permission to land at its initial destination, the airport in Grozny, capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya. Shortly afterward he tried it in the nearby city of Makhachkala. However, was met with refusal from both places, alleging fog and vision difficulties to proceed to landing. For this reason, it had to divert to the Aktau airport (Kazakhstan) to make an emergency landing, thus being forced to fly over the waters of the Caspian Sea.
“It was a regular flight. It had to fly to Grozny, but due to fog they sent it to Makhachkala and from there, apparently, to Aktau,” one of the spokespersons for the airport in the Chechen capital told the TASS agency after the accident.
The crisis cabinet formed after the plane crash confirmed at that time that the “crew sent a distress signal at 08:35 local time (04:35 Spanish peninsular time) and reported a failure in the control system.” “Then at 08:49 (04:49) they requested an emergency landing in Aktau and tried to do so in direct mode, however, at 09:28 (05:28) the plane crashed into the ground,” the aforementioned sources added.
Plane crashed in Kazakhstan
Accident or attack?
Initial theories considered the possible cause of the accident different theoriesamong which the plane collided with a flock of birds or the explosion of an oxygen cylinder inside the plane stood out. However, as the hours passed, accusations between administrations and governments that it was part of human action began to gain more weight.
According to the Azerbaijani pro-government agency Caliber.Az, the crash of the aircraft occurred after a missile hit it, specifically a Pantsir-S. Thus, he explains that there are several Russian sources that detailed that its anti-aircraft defenses were trying to reach the Ukrainian drones that sneak into the skies of Chechnya, right where the plane had to pass. This theory is supported by at least four sources consulted by Reuters.
From Ukraine they also accuse Russia, challenging the official version and ensuring that the plane was hit by Russian air defense missiles. “The explosion of an air defense missile damaged the plane and disabled its systems,” the head of the Center for Combating Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Andri Kovalenko, wrote on his social networks this Wednesday. The Ukrainian returned this Thursday to speak on the matter, further adding that “the holes in the plane’s fuselage during flight are not caused by birds. “The passengers clearly recorded it on video.”
Meanwhile, the transport prosecutor of the Mangystau region of Kazakhstan, Abilaibek Ordabaev, has stated that the investigation will be carried out solely and exclusively by the authorities of his country and that neither representatives of Russia nor Azerbaijan will be involved. “Today, specialists from Russia and Azerbaijan are not part of the research groups, which are in charge of Kazakhstan”he added, clarifying at the same time that said representatives have had access to the wreckage of the plane but not to the investigation.
The Kazakh official has asked not to make hasty accusations and to wait for the results of the investigations and has stated that what “is an obvious fact” is that “The plane suffered an accident in Kazakhstan and the balloon exploded [de oxígeno]”. However, the social networks of Russia and Azerbaijan have spread a video in which damage is supposedly observed on the fuselage of the plane similar to that which occurs after the impact of an anti-aircraft missile, supporting the theory that the plane lost control after the impact of a missile.
Most aviation experts have agreed that it is most likely that the holes observed in some parts of the aircraft were caused by the impact of an anti-aircraft missile containing shrapnel.
Plane crashed in Kazakhstan
The Kremlin version
Initially, official Russian media reported that the plane could not land in Grozny due to fog and later added the possibility of a bird strike. However, some Russian channels They are coming to similar conclusions as Ukrainian and Kazakh researchers.
The Telegram channel ‘VChK-OGPU’, with more than a million subscribers, published fragments of the conversation between the crew and the Grozny flight operator. According to the dialogue, the aircraft would have been affected by activated drone inhibitors for the Ukrainian attack. As the descent to land began, the GPS stopped working and communication was lost.
“The pilot could not land in those conditions and decided to head to Baku. When turning around, an explosion occurred nearby; everything indicates that the plane was hit by anti-aircraft defense systems,” according to the channel. For his part, Yuri Podolyaka, a well-known Russian defense expert blogger, also opined on Telegram that the plane was probably “accidentally shot down by an air defense system.” Similarly, the Fighterbomber channel, which shared one of the videos about the accident, suggested that it was unlikely that a bird strike would have damaged the plane’s fuselage.
For the moment, the Kremlin has refused to make statements, stating that it is still too early to draw conclusions about the plane crash. Despite being asked whether the aircraft could have been attacked, the Russian spokesperson limited himself to pointing out that “collided with a flock of birds.” Likewise, he has requested that the ongoing investigations be allowed to continue.
Members of the emergency services are working to rescue passengers from a plane that crashed while en route between the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, and the Russian city of Grozny, this Wednesday.
The solution could be in the black boxes
One of the keys to this accident (or attack) could be found in the black boxes of the aircraft, found this Thursday at the accident site, according to official Kazakh sources cited by EFE. “During the inspection of the accident site, two flight recorders were discovered that will be handed over to the Air Accident Investigation Department,” said Ordabaev, who added that the inspection work is in the “final stage.”
Specialists from the Brazilian company Embraer will participate in decrypting the plane’s black boxes, who will come to the country this Friday to continue the investigation. A team of experts from the Interstate Aviation Committee, which investigates air accidents in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and members of the Kazakhstan Air Force will also attend, as reported by Bozumbayev. For her part, NATO spokesperson Farah Dakhlalla has called for a “thorough” investigation into the accident.
