Azerbaijan Airlines: Plane crashed due to external interference, flights to several locations in Russia suspended

AUTHOR:M.J. GDNUS

Azerbaijani airline Azerbaijan Airlines said today that its plane crashed on Wednesday in Kazakhstan due to “physical and technical external interference”.

The company also said it was suspending its flights to several locations in Russia due to potential danger after suspicions arose that Russian air defenses had shot down its plane this week.

Experts and media in Azerbaijan claim that the plane was hit by Russian air defenses.

The Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 was flying from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons that are still unclear, and crashed while attempting to land in Aktau, Kazakhstan after flying east over the Caspian Sea.

Authorities in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia have not commented on the possible cause of the crash, and an official investigation is pending.

An Azerbaijani lawmaker has blamed Moscow.

Rasim Musabekov told the Azerbaijani Turan news agency on Wednesday that the plane was shot at while it was over Grozny and called on Russia to offer an official apology.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Musabekov’s statement, saying it was up to investigators to determine the cause of the crash.

“The case is under investigation and we do not believe we have the right to make any assessments until the conclusions are drawn as a result of the investigation,” Peskov said.

Azerbaijani investigators are investigating the crash near Grozny, according to a statement from the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General.

When the official investigation into the crash began, some aviation experts noted that holes visible in the rear of the plane, which fell completely to the ground, suggested that the plane was hit by a Russian air defense system that was repelling a Ukrainian drone attack in Chechnya.

After suspending flights from Baku to Grozny and Makhachkala on Wednesday, Azerbaijan Airlines also suspended flights to several Russian cities today, cutting air links to Sochi, Volgograd, Ufa and Samara.

The statement said the flights would be suspended “pending preliminary results of the investigation into the crash of the Embraer 190 on flight J2-8243 from Baku to Grozny, caused by physical and technical malfunctions, and taking into account potential risks to the flight.”

The company will continue to fly to six other Russian cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan.