An Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash on Christmas Day has prompted speculation the plane was shot down by Russia after it took a detour of hundreds of miles in the wrong direction and crash-landed with holes in the fuselage.
Russian military bloggers have suggested the plane, which crashed near the Kazakhstan city of Aktau, could have been mistaken for a Ukrainian drone.
The incident, which killed at least 38 people and injured a further 29, took place after a significant detour, which could have been caused by GPS jamming.
The Embraer 190 aircraft made an emergency landing 3 km from the Aktau, an oil and gas hub on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, on Wednesday.
It was flying from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya in the north Caucasus.
Emergency specialists work at the crash site of a passenger plane near Aktau - AZAMAT SARSENBAYEV/EPA-EFE/ShutterstockMore
Footage of the crash, circling online, showed the plane making a steep descent before smashing into the ground in a fireball.
Other footage showed part of its fuselage ripped away from the wings and the rest of the aircraft lying upside down in the grass.
Russian military bloggers and some aviation analysts have suggested holes in the fuselage of the craft may have been caused by shrapnel from an anti-aircraft missile.
The crew on the aircraft reported a collision in the air before the plane began its emergency landing, which the Russian aviation authorities initially suspected to have been caused by a flock of birds.
However, it was later revealed that one of the plane’s oxygen tanks had exploded, prompting speculation that the collision was actually an encounter with Russian air defences.
Vladimir Putin’s forces have militarised the area the plane was flying over, on a detour that had not been planned by the airline.
The plane was attempting to land at a Russian airport in Grozny, which at the time of landing was under attack by Ukrainian drones.
Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine announced that:
“This morning, an Embraer 190 aircraft of the Azerbaijani airline flying from Baku to Grozny was shot down by a Russian air defense system. Russia was supposed to close the airspace over Grozny, but did not do so. The plane was damaged by the Russians and was sent to Kazakhstan instead of being urgently landed in Grozny and saving lives.”
Grozny has been the target of a number of retaliatory Ukrainian drone attacks in recent weeks, and it was flight J2-8243’s misfortune to arrive at Grozny shortly after such an attack. It seems that Russian air defences mistook the Embraer for a Ukrainian drone, and engaged it with unidentified systems.
Surviving passengers said that on the third attempt to land in Grozny, there were some explosions outside the aircraft and that the flight was then diverted across the Caspian to Aktau in Kazakhstan.
Passenger video from inside the aircraft showed signs of shrapnel damage, and a woman passenger suffered a leg wound.
As the aircraft crossed the Caspian, the crew began to encounter control problems – which may have been the result of hydraulic failure. There seems to be some evidence to support the theory that by the time the aircraft was approaching Aktau, the crew were controlling the aircraft largely by using engine power and trimmers, and that they had been flying for more than 50 minutes with control systems that had failed, struggling to maintain attitude and heading. There are some parallels with the non-fatal loss of an Air Astana E190 on 11 November, 2018 which suffered control issues after departing from Lisbon’s Alverca Air Base, and had to divert to Beja.
Tragically, the aircraft crashed only a few miles short of Aktau’s runway.
If the plane was shot down, everyone on board would have panicked. The short story is that because of fog, it was diverted from Grozny, Russia, to Kazakhstan, where it tried to land multiple times. On the third attempt, it was either hit by something oxygen explosion happened. Not too far away in Ukraine, a drone strike occurred.
People on Twitter say that over Kazakhstan, neither Russia nor Ukraine would have shot at it. And I must commend the two pilots who, for 50 minutes, attempted to gain control. Clearly, their expertise resulted in the saving of many lives. We are all very grateful for that.
And I still want to know who was on that plane.
LET US PRAY
🙏
Father God,
Thank You for the saving of so many lives!
We pray for the lives lost, and their families. Grant them Your love, and may they have answers for what happened.
Help all the wounded recover, Great Lord. Bless them and heal them of their injuries.
Being an Occam's Razor kind of guy, "The Telegraph" story comes the closes to explaining why the pilots deliberately flew a damaged plane to an airport 45 minutes away and outside an active war zone.
The subject both the London-based Telegraph and the Ukrainian PR post ignored, is whether a Ukrainian drone on course to blow something up on the ground at Groznyy, accidentally rammed the airliner in flight.
Drones are notoriously stupid and lack an instinct to avoid collisions. Almost always in a war zone, their sole objective is to hit the intended target by surprise, not to warn innocent people of their presence.
The fact that the dead were all at the front of the plane near an oxygen tank that exploded and the survivors were distant from the explosion at the plane's rear, suggests that the Ukrainian drone that rammed the tail section of the plane destroying most of its directional control, sent shrapnel flying forward that caused a fire near the oxygen tank at the front of the plane. The oxygen tank then likely overheated and exploded, wrecking the plane.
If so, Russia's main fault here was ordering the damaged plane to divert elsewhere while damaged and on fire.
Ukraine's main fault was not to warn civilian airliners that they were planning a drone strike on some target at or near the Groznyy Airport.
A century ago people were still discussing a similar event, the German torpedo attack on the passenger liner Lusitania. They sank a civilian vessel without any warning, firing submerged where they could make no communications.
The Lusitania incident convinced many neutral nations that Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare was intolerable and a war crime. It drove the pro-British faction in the US to influence Congress to enter the conflict by declaring war on Germany, as nobody in the pro-German faction here could think of a justifiable reason to drown civilians on a passenger ship by blowing holes in it with torpedoes and causing it to sink.
I anticipate Russia will delay announcing any charges against Ukraine until the FSB and military intelligence have film footage in place that absolutely proves a Ukrainian drone was attacking the Groznyy Airport and rammed the Baku-Groznyy airliner while trying to reach the airport and kill people on the ground.
Was anyone aboard opposed to Federal Banking Systems, Mossad antics, or about to spill the beans on the globe-homo pedo activities?
Being an Occam's Razor kind of guy, "The Telegraph" story comes the closes to explaining why the pilots deliberately flew a damaged plane to an airport 45 minutes away and outside an active war zone.
The subject both the London-based Telegraph and the Ukrainian PR post ignored, is whether a Ukrainian drone on course to blow something up on the ground at Groznyy, accidentally rammed the airliner in flight.
Drones are notoriously stupid and lack an instinct to avoid collisions. Almost always in a war zone, their sole objective is to hit the intended target by surprise, not to warn innocent people of their presence.
The fact that the dead were all at the front of the plane near an oxygen tank that exploded and the survivors were distant from the explosion at the plane's rear, suggests that the Ukrainian drone that rammed the tail section of the plane destroying most of its directional control, sent shrapnel flying forward that caused a fire near the oxygen tank at the front of the plane. The oxygen tank then likely overheated and exploded, wrecking the plane.
If so, Russia's main fault here was ordering the damaged plane to divert elsewhere while damaged and on fire.
Ukraine's main fault was not to warn civilian airliners that they were planning a drone strike on some target at or near the Groznyy Airport.
A century ago people were still discussing a similar event, the German torpedo attack on the passenger liner Lusitania. They sank a civilian vessel without any warning, firing submerged where they could make no communications.
The Lusitania incident convinced many neutral nations that Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare was intolerable and a war crime. It drove the pro-British faction in the US to influence Congress to enter the conflict by declaring war on Germany, as nobody in the pro-German faction here could think of a justifiable reason to drown civilians on a passenger ship by blowing holes in it with torpedoes and causing it to sink.
I anticipate Russia will delay announcing any charges against Ukraine until the FSB and military intelligence have film footage in place that absolutely proves a Ukrainian drone was attacking the Groznyy Airport and rammed the Baku-Groznyy airliner while trying to reach the airport and kill people on the ground.