Azerbaijan Airlines crash in Kazakhstan kills 38 of 67 people onboard – National

An Azerbaijani Airliner with 67 people on board crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday, killing 38 people and leaving 29 survivors, a Kazakh official said.

Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbaev revealed the figures when she met with Azerbaijani officials, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

The Embraer 190 was en route from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus when it diverted and attempted an emergency landing 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from Aktau, Azerbaijan Airlines said.

Speaking at a press conference, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said it was too soon to speculate on the reasons behind the crash, but said the weather had forced the plane to change its planned course.

“The information given to me is that the plane changed its course between Baku and Grozny due to poor weather conditions and went to Aktau airport, where it crashed on landing,” he said.

Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said preliminary information showed that the pilots headed to Aktau after a bird strike led to an emergency on board.

According to Kazakh officials, those on board the plane included 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhs and three Kyrgyz nationals. Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general’s office earlier said 32 of the 67 people on board survived the crash, but told journalists the number was not final. The Associated Press could not immediately reconcile the difference between the number of survivors given by Kazakhstan and Azerbaijani officials.

Cellphone videos circulating online appeared to show the plane making a steep descent before crashing into the ground in a fireball. Other images showed part of its fuselage torn from the wings and the rest of the plane lying upside down in the grass. The footage matched the aircraft’s colors and registration number.

Some of the videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging other passengers away from the wreckage.

Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed that the plane appeared to be somewhat of a figure, once near the airport in Aktau, its altitude moved up and down substantially in the last minutes of the flight before impacting the ground

FlightRadar24 said separately in an online post that the plane was experiencing “severe GPS jamming,” which “caused the plane to transmit poor ADS-B data,” referring to the information that allows flight-tracking websites to track aircraft to follow in flight. Russia has been blamed in the past for blocking GPS broadcasts in the wider region.

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Azerbaijan Airlines said it would keep members of the public updated and changed its social media banners to solid black. It also said it would suspend flights between Baku and Grozny, as well as between Baku and the city of Makhachkala in Russia’s North Caucasus, until its investigation into the crash is concluded.

Azerbaijan’s state news agency, Azertac, said an official delegation from Azerbaijan’s minister of emergency situations, the deputy general prosecutor and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines were sent to Aktau to conduct an “on-the-spot investigation”.

Aliyev, who was traveling to Russia, returned to Azerbaijan after hearing news of the accident, the president’s press service said. He was to attend an informal meeting of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a bloc of former Soviet countries that was formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in St. Petersburg.

Aliyev expressed his condolences to the families of the victims in a statement on social media. “It is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” he wrote.

He also signed a decree declaring December 26 a day of mourning in Azerbaijan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Aliyev on the phone and expressed his condolences, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Speaking at the CIS meeting in St. Petersburg, Putin also said that Russia’s Emergencies Ministry sent a plane carrying equipment and medical workers to Kazakhstan to help with the aftermath of the crash.

Kazakh, Azerbaijani and Russian authorities said they were investigating the crash. Embraer told The Associated Press in a statement that the company is “ready to assist all relevant authorities.”

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Aida Sultanova in London contributed to this report.

& copy 2024 The Canadian Press