The second black box has been found at the plane crash site near Aktau and handed over to the investigation department, according to a Kazakh official from the transport department on Thursday. The Embraer 190 aircraft operated by Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 from Baku to Grozny crashed near Aktau Airport in Kazakhstan on Wednesday. Of all the 67 people on board, 38 were killed in the crash, and 29 survivors including two children were pulled from the wreckage, Kazakh authorities said on Wednesday.
According to the official, interviews have been carried out with victims, ground service workers and all witnesses to this incident. Radio communication recordings between the crew and dispatchers have been retrieved, and the investigation of the crash site, covering more than 4,000 square meters, is underway.
Kazakhstan's Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev said on Thursday during a press conference that the cause of the plane crash remains unknown and is still under investigation.
Bozumbayev said that Kazakhstan is in contact with the relevant departments from Azerbaijan. He said Kazakhstan does not have an official version of the accident, and neither Russia nor Azerbaijan has provided one.
Aviation experts said on Thursday that Russian air defence fire was likely responsible for the Azerbaijani plane crash. Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons still unclear and crashed while making an attempt to land in Aktau in Kazakhstan after flying east across the Caspian Sea. However, the Kremlin rejected the media reports and warned of "hypothesis" reporting in the plane crash. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It would be wrong to make any hypotheses before the investigation’s conclusions."
Azerbaijani plane crash
The plane went down about 3 kilometres from Aktau. Cellphone footage circulating online appeared to show the aircraft making a steep descent before crashing into the ground and exploding in a fireball. Other footage showed a part of its fuselage ripped away from the wings and the rest of the aircraft lying upside down on the grass.
Was the Russian attack behind the plane crash?
As the official crash investigation started, some experts pointed out that holes seen in the plane’s tail section could indicate that it could have come under fire from Russian air defence systems fending off a Ukrainian drone attack. Ukrainian drones had previously attacked Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, and other regions in the country’s North Caucasus. An official in Chechnya said another drone attack on the region was fended off on Wednesday, although federal authorities didn’t report it.
Mark Zee of OPSGroup, which monitors the world’s airspace and airports for risks, said that the analysis of the images of fragments of the crashed plane indicates that it was almost certainly hit by a surface-to-air missile, or SAM.
“Much more to investigate, but at a high level we’d put the probability of it being a SAM attack on the aircraft at being well into the 90-99% bracket,” he said. Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation security firm based in the United Kingdom, warned its clients that the “Azerbaijan Airlines flight was likely shot down by a Russian military air-defense system.” Osprey provides analysis for carriers still flying into Russia after Western airlines halted their flights during the war.
(With inputs from agency)
