The Azerbaijan Airlines flight which crashed on Christmas while attempting to make an emergency landing was been shot down by Russian Air Defences in the Grozny area according to Reuters sources and evidence from the survivors of the crash.
The Embraer E190 was operating a flight from Baku in Azerbaijan to Grozny, Russia when it was forced to divert due to fog. It then crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan while attempting to make an emergency landing after being hit by up to 3 proximity explosions from Surface to Air missiles (SAMs). 38 of the 67 people onboard were killed.
According to Rashad Nabiyev, Azerbaijan’s Transport Minister, all the survivors “without exception stated they heard three blast sounds when the aircraft was above Grozny,”
Video from onboard the aircraft shows it having depressurised before the crash, with oxygen masks hanging from its overhead locations, but the aircraft is seemingly under control.
Another video shows the aircraft attempting an emergency landing with the landing gear deployed but in a starboard (right) wing-down angle as it approached the ground. Despite the best efforts of the pilots to level the plane out, the aircraft broke up on impact.
Images of the fuselage from the crash site show peppered marks on the fuselage which are consistent with an air defence missile having exploded nearby.
Russian State Media immediately portrayed the aircraft as having hit a flock of birds after it diverted from Grozny. However, bird strikes generally damage the nose of an aircraft and the engines rather than the mid or rear fuselage. But have since said that the air situation in Grozny was “complicated” at the time when the aircraft was in the area as they were trying to repel a drone attack from Ukraine, a country which Russia illegally invaded in 2022.
This would not be the first time Russian Air Defence systems have shot down a civilian airliner. In 2014 Russian forces shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 killing all onboard believing it to be a Ukrainian military aircraft.
An investigation is now underway by Azerbaijan authorities to confirm the cause of the incident.