There was an Azerbaijani airliner crash in Kazakhstan the day before. Now, flight experts say it was most likely hit by Russian air defense systems.
The crash killed 38 of the 67 people on board. Here’s what we know about it:
How did the plane go down? Wednesday, an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 was on its way from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, a city in Russia in the North Caucasus. However, it was moved for unknown reasons. It crashed as it tried to land in Aktau, Kazakhstan, after flying across the Caspian Sea to the east.
Not far from Aktau, about 3 km (2 miles), the plane crashed near the water. Online videos from cellphones seemed to show the plane descending quickly before it hit the ground and exploded in a ball of fire.
Rescuers rushed 29 people who were still alive to hospitals.
What did Azerbaijan do? Thursday was a national day of sadness in Azerbaijan. Flags across the country were flown at half-staff, all roads were closed at noon, and ships and trains sound their horns.
At a news meeting on Wednesday, Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, said that the plane had to change its planned route because of bad weather.
What do the government and experts say about a possible reason? The crash is being looked into by officials in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Russia.
When asked by the Associated Press, Embraer ERJ -0.49% EMBR3 +1.24% said that the company is “ready to assist all relevant authorities.”
Rosaviatsia, Russia’s civil aviation body, said that early information showed that the pilots turned the plane around and went to Aktau after a bird strike caused an emergency on board.
There are, however, some flight experts who say that the holes seen in the plane’s tail after it crashed probably mean that it was shot down by Russian air defenses trying to stop a Ukrainian drone attack.
Mark Zee of OPSGroup, a company that checks the world’s airports and skies for risks, said that pieces of the crashed plane strongly suggest that it was hit by a surface-to-air missile 90–99% of the time.
Flight safety company Osprey Flight Solutions in the UK told its clients that the “Azerbaijan Airlines flight was likely shot down by a Russian military air-defense system.”
Andrew Nicholson, CEO of Osprey, said that during the war, the company had sent out more than 200 alerts about drone strikes and air defense systems in Russia.
In an online post, FlightRadar24 said that the plane had been hit by “strong GPS jamming,” which stopped flight tracking data that was needed to see where the planes were flying. To protect itself from drone strikes, Russia has used a lot of high-tech jamming gear.
A day later, there was still no clear word. However, Yan Matveyev, a Russian military expert who works on his own, said that pictures of the crashed plane’s tail show damage that could be caused by shrapnel from the Russian Pantsyr-S1 air defense system.
He said it’s not clear why the pilots chose to fly hundreds of miles east across the Caspian Sea instead of trying to land in Russia after the plane was hit. They may have thought that the damage wasn’t too bad or that they couldn’t land somewhere closer.
As the plane got closer to Grozny, the online daily Caliber in Azerbaijan said that it was hit by a Russian Pantsyr-S air defense system and that its systems were also hampered by equipment that jammed them.
The paper asked why the Russian government didn’t shut down the airport after the Wednesday drone attack and why they wouldn’t let the plane land in Grozny or another nearby Russian airport after it was hit.
There were reports that air defense assets fired at the plane. On Thursday, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, told reporters, “It would be wrong to make assumptions before investigators make their verdict.”
Kazakhstani and Azerbaijani officials have also refused to say what might have caused the crash, saying that it is up to experts to figure it out.
