Flying from Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in Chechnya on Christmas Day turned fatal for many on board an Azerbaijan Airlines flight when it crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after veering off its planned route.
According to officials,
38 people of the 67, including the pilot and crew members on board, lost their lives in the crash.
However, 29 passengers and a crew member survived, and some of them have now shared their harrowing experiences of the moments leading up to the disaster.
Here’s what they had to say about what happened.
‘Heard loud bang, felt like the plane was drunk’
The Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243, carrying 62 passengers and five crew members, was on its way from Baku to Grozny in Russia when disaster struck.
Subhonkul Rakhimov, one of the survivors, described the terrifying moments leading up to the crash from his hospital bed. Speaking to Reuters, he said he heard a loud bang as the plane approached Grozny.
“After the bang…I thought the plane was going to fall apart,” Rakhimov recalled. Fearing the worst, he began to pray.
“It was obvious that the plane had been damaged in some way,” he added. “It was as if it was drunk—not the same plane anymore.”
A viral video captured during the crash offers a glimpse into the chaos inside the cabin. In the footage, a passenger is heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) as the plane nosedived. Yellow oxygen masks dangled from above, and cries and screams filled the air.
The final moments of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane before its crash in Kazakhstan were captured by a passenger onboard.
Aftermath also included in the footage. pic.twitter.com/nCRozjdoUY
— Clash Report (@clashreport) December 25, 2024
According to a crew member, the Embraer 190 aircraft had already made three unsuccessful attempts to land in Grozny due to heavy fog.
Flightradar24 data revealed that the plane’s vertical speed oscillated over 100 times in the final 74 minutes of the flight. Eventually, the flight was redirected to Aktau in Kazakhstan, but trouble soon escalated.
Zulfugar Asadov, a flight attendant told Reuters the flight’s captain “said that he was advised to land the plane at sea, but he decided to set a course for Aktau and land it on the ground…He warned that there would be a hard landing and asked us to be ready and prepare the passengers.”
An Azeri crew member, also hospitalised after the crash, recounted hearing three loud bangs from outside the aircraft.
“The pilot had just lifted the plane up when I heard a bang from the left wing. There were three bangs,” he told ABC News.
Moments later, he felt something strike his left arm and realised the cabin had depressurised.
“I don’t know what touched me; I just looked and saw blood,” he explained.
Another passenger, Vafa Shabanova, said she too heard a loud bang, quickly followed by a second. Crew members instructed her to move to the back of the plane as oxygen levels in the cabin dropped.
🚨 NEW FOOTAGE: Moments Before the AZAL Plane Crash
🇦🇿🇰🇿🇷🇺 Video captured onboard the Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer E190AR flight reveals alarming details:
An emergency hole is visible on a wing component, raising questions about structural damage during flight.
A passenger’s leg… pic.twitter.com/UZC3LCihok— Axel (@AxelCharai) December 25, 2024
Rakhimov described being “thrown back and forth” in his seat, strapped in, before everything went quiet. It was then that he realised the plane had landed.
“I realized that we have landed,” he told The New York Times. “I didn’t know what to do — whether to laugh or cry.”
Unverified footage of the crash showed the plane bursting into flames as it hit the ground. Soon after, videos emerged of survivors stumbling out of the charred wreckage, dazed and disoriented.
Did a Russian missile hit the plane?
Kazakhstan has announced that it has opened an investigation into the cause of the crash.
Officials have confirmed the recovery of the plane’s black box, which is expected to provide crucial insights into the events leading up to the tragedy.
Initially, Russia’s aviation watchdog suggested that the crash might have been caused by a
bird strike.
“Preliminary: after a collision with birds, due to an emergency on board, its commander decided to ‘go’ to an alternate airfield – Aktau was chosen,” the agency shared on Telegram.
However, Azerbaijan Airlines presented a different theory, alleging that “physical and technical external interference” might have caused the crash. While it did not elaborate on the nature of this interference, the airline suspended several flights to Russian cities on Friday.
Adding to the speculation, a high-ranking Azeri government source told ABC News that new evidence suggests the plane might have been shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile. This theory links the crash to the area’s ongoing tensions, where Russian air defences have recently been combating Ukrainian drones.
The Fighterbomber Telegram channel, reportedly operated by Capt Ilya Tumanov of the Russian military, shared a video showing damage to the plane that some believe resembles shrapnel or shelling.
❗️/1. Russian air defense most likely caused the crash of an Embraer 190 passenger plane during UAV attack on Chechnya:
An Embraer 190 passenger plane belonging to Azerbaijan Airlines crashed this morning. 67 passengers of which 5 crew members were on board. 32 people survived… pic.twitter.com/qkiSaZlw1Z
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) December 25, 2024
The Kremlin has refrained from commenting on the speculation, emphasising the importance of waiting for the investigation’s findings.
“The investigation into the air accident is ongoing. We do not think we have the right to give any assessments until conclusions are drawn,” Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
He further stated, “We have our own aviation authorities that can do it, and this information may come only from them.”
Meanwhile, Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia’s federal air transport agency, pointed to Ukraine as a possible culprit.
“The situation in the Grozny Airport area was rather complicated on that day and at those hours. Ukrainian drones were conducting terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in Grozny and Vladikavkaz,” Yadrov said, according to Russian state media.
As investigations continue, authorities are piecing together the events that led to this tragic incident.
with input from agencies