The Russian Federal Air Transport Agency – “Rosaviatsia“, announced today that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday had decided to change its route. The plane was supposed to land in Grozny in Chechnya. According to "Rosaviatsia", the route was changed due to thick fog and an air alert issued in Chechnya about an attack by Ukrainian drones, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
The regulatory agency said that the captain of the flight was offered other airports to land at, but he chose Aktau in Kazakhstan. “Rosaviatsia“ promised to provide full cooperation to Kazakh and Azerbaijani investigators.
Russia has said it is important to wait for the investigation to be completed to understand what happened. “Rosaviatsia“ also said that on the day of the crash, while the plane was making two attempts to land, Ukrainian drones attacked the Chechen capital Grozny.
“At that time, Ukrainian military drones were carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Grozny and Vladikavkaz“,“Rosaviatsia“ head Dmitry Yadrov wrote on the “Telegram“ app. Yesterday, four Azerbaijani officials told Reuters that the plane was hit by a Russian air defense system.
Flights to several Russian airports were suspended after the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane near Aktau, BTA reported.
Following the preliminary results of the investigation into the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) flight "J2-8243", an Embraer 190, flying from Baku to Grozny, indicating physical and technical external interference, and in view of the potential risks to flight safety, by decision of the State Civil Aviation Agency of Azerbaijan dated December 28, 2024. flights from the capital Baku to the Russian airports of "Mineralnye Vody", "Sochi", "Volgograd", "Ufa" and "Samara" will be suspended, the Azerbaijani news agency AZERTAC reported.
Previously, on December 25, Azerbaijan Airlines suspended flights from Baku to Grozny and Makhachkala.