An Azerbaijan Airlines plane with 72 people onboard has crash-landed in Kazakhstan after the Embraer E90 regional jet entered a steep descent and exploded on impact with the ground.
The incident occurred on December 25 after Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 from Baku to Grozny in Chechnya diverted to Aktau due to bad weather at its intended destination.
Azerbaijan Airlines has confirmed that there were 62 passengers and five crew members onboard the aircraft. The airline has already released the passenger manifest and confirmed the nationalities of those onboard, which included 37 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian citizens, 6 Kazakh citizens, and 3 Kyrgyz citizens.
In a statement, the airline said that there were no children onboard the plane.
Initial reports coming out of Kazakhstan suggest that as many as 32 people may have miraculously survived the crash, although six of the survivors are said to be in critical condition.
A spokesperson for Azerbaijan Airlines confirmed the news that there are “survivors who are receiving initial medical assistance.” The spokesperson added that “information about the injured will be provided shortly.”
“Contacts are being established with the Kazakh authorities, and the necessary operational support is being provided by Kazakhstan’s emergency rescue agencies at the scene,” the airline said in a press release.
Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 departed Baku five minutes early at around 7:55 am on Christmas Day for the short one-hour flight to Grozny. According to data supplied by flight tracking website Flight Radar 24, the 11-year-old aircraft was heading north over the Caspian Sea along the coast of Azerbaijan and Georgia before its position was lost due to GPS interference near the coast with Russia.
The pilots attempted to land in Grozny, but due to bad weather, they performed a rejected landing and then decided to divert to Aktau on the opposite side of the Caspian Sea.
The plane crashed around 3 kilometers near the city of Aktau after entering a steep descent. The cause of the crash remains unknown at this time.
