Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashes near Kazakh city, 32 survivors
Print Edition
An Embraer passenger jet flying from Azerbaijan to Russia crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan yesterday with 62 passengers and five crew on board, Kazakh authorities announced, saying 32 survivors had been rescued.
Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 had flown hundreds of miles off its scheduled route to crash on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea, after what Russia’s aviation watchdog said was an emergency that may have been caused by a bird strike.
According to Kazakh media reports, the passengers on board included 37 citizens from Azerbaijan, 16 from Russia, six from Kazakhstan, and three from Kyrgyzstan.
The Chinese Consulate General in Aktobe confirmed to Xinhua that there were no Chinese nationals on board the plane.
Unverified video of the crash showed the plane descending rapidly before bursting into flames as it hit the seashore, and thick black smoke then rising. Bloodied and bruised passengers could be seen stumbling from a piece of the fuselage that had remained intact.
Kazakhstan’s emergencies ministry said in a statement that fire services had put out the blaze and that the survivors, including two children, were being treated at a nearby hospital. The bodies of the dead were being recovered.
Azerbaijan Airlines said the Embraer 190 jet was flying from Baku to Grozny, capital of the Chechnya region in southern Russia, but had been forced to make an emergency landing around 3 kilometers from Aktau in Kazakhstan.
“Preliminary: after a collision with birds, due to an emergency situation on board, its commander decided to ‘go’ to an alternate airfield — Aktau was chosen,” Russia's aviation watchdog said on Telegram.
Aktau is on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan and Russia. Commercial aviation-tracking websites tracked the flight flying north on its scheduled route along the west coast before its flight path was no longer recorded. It then reappeared on the east coast, circling near Aktau airport before crashing into the beach.
An official at Makhachkala airport in Russia on the east coast of the Caspian, the airport closest to where the flight disappeared from tracking, said it had been closed to incoming traffic for several hours yesterday morning.
Authorities in Kazakhstan said a government commission had been set up to investigate what had happened and its members ordered to fly to the site and ensure the families of the dead and injured were getting the help they needed.
Kazakhstan would cooperate with Azerbaijan on the investigation, they said.
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