Kazakhstan plane crash: Witness recounts "drunk" flight horror
One of the surviving passengers of the plane that crashed on Wednesday in Kazakhstan claims that as the aircraft approached landing in Grozny, he heard a loud bang. Then the airplane began to behave strangely, "as if it were drunk," said a passenger of the tragic flight.
The plane, flying from Baku in Azerbaijan to Grozny, crashed Wednesday morning near Aktau, Kazakhstan. In the disaster, 38 of the 67 people on board were killed.
One of the surviving passengers is Subhonkul Rakhimov, who shared his experiences with a Reuters reporter.
Rakhimov recounts that as the aircraft approached landing at Grozny airport, he heard a loud bang. "I thought the plane was going to break apart," said Rakhimov, who is in the hospital, adding that he began to pray in anticipation of a disaster.
After the bang, the plane started acting strange, "as if it were drunk," said Rakhimov. After the crash, he stated, silence fell on board, followed by the groans of the injured.
Suspicions of being shot down
Four sources familiar with the preliminary findings of the Azerbaijani investigation suggest that the plane might have been mistakenly shot down by Russian air defence.
The carrier, Azerbaijan Airlines, announced on Friday that starting Saturday, they will suspend flights to seven Russian cities: Mineralnye Vody, Sochi, Volgograd, Ufa, Samara, Grozny, and Makhachkala until the investigation conducted by the Azerbaijani civil aviation authority is concluded, reported the Baku.ws portal citing airline representatives.
Azerbaijan Airlines flights to other Russian airports — Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Astrakhan, Kazan, and Novosibirsk — have not been cancelled.
The Meduza portal reported that shortly before the suspension of flights was announced, an Azerbaijani airliner flying from Baku to Mineralnye Vody turned around over the Caspian Sea and landed back at the airport in the capital.
On Thursday, Israeli airline El Al warned of suspending all flights from Tel Aviv to Moscow, citing "changes in Russian airspace." The decision of the Israeli carrier resulted from preliminary assessments indicating that the cause of Wednesday's Azerbaijani plane crash was fire from the Russian air defence system.
