Azerbaijan Airlines Jet Crashes in Kazakhstani City of Aktau
  • 25 Dec, 2024
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Azerbaijan Airlines Jet Crashes in Kazakhstani City of Aktau

Kazakhstan's Emergency Ministry confirmed in a Telegram statement that 67 people, including five crew, in Azerbaijan Airlines met with a plane crash in the Kazakhstan city of Aktau. At least 28 of the passengers on board survived the crash and have been hospitalized, indicating that more than 30 people died, and only four bodies have been recovered yet.

Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 was routed from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to Grozny in Russia. Reports say it diverted its route because of fog. However, Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency spokesperson examined the preliminary details and stated that the pilot decided to divert to Aktau after a bird strike on the aircraft, leading to "an emergency situation on board."

Initially, Kazakhstan's Emergency Ministry said 25 people survived the crash. Nevertheless, as the search and rescue operation continued at the site of the crash, they later revised the number of surviving passengers to 27 and then to 28.

Unverified video footage of this plane crash, floating all over the internet, appears to validate that the aircraft was steeping descent at high speed before smashing the ground and turning into a fireball when attempting to make an emergency landing.

FlightRadar24.com's flight-tracking data reported that the Embraer 190 aircraft took off from Baku at 03:55 GMT on Wednesday and crashed at nearly 06:28. Furthermore, it showed the plane's altitude moving up and down substantially over the last minutes before hitting the ground.

Through an online post, FlightRadar24 separately informed that the plane had faced "strong GPS jamming," which "made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data." They backed this verdict through the information that allows flight-tracking websites to follow aircraft during their transit.

According to a statement issued on Telegram by Russia's aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, a total of 150 personnel and 45 equipment units were deployed in the emergency response to rescue the surviving individuals and search for the rest.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, expressed his condolences to the families of the deceased passengers through his Telegram post on Wednesday morning. Moreover, the post said some of those being treated in hospital were in a severe condition and that he and others would pray for their rapid recovery.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had called his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, to express his condolences. Peskov exclaimed, "We deeply sympathize with those who lost their loved ones in this air crash and wish a speedy recovery to those who survived.