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Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243

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2024 aircraft accident in Aktau, Kazakhstan
Graphic of a globe with a red analog clockThis article documents a recent aviation accident. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses, and initial news reports may be unreliable. The latest updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. Feel free to improve this article or discuss changes on the talk page, but please note that updates without valid and reliable references will be removed. (December 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243
4K-AZ65, the aircraft involved in the accident, photographed on 18 June 2016
Accident
Date25 December 2024
SummaryCrashed on approach during emergency landing; suspected shootdown
SiteNear Aqtau International Airport, Aktau, Kazakhstan
43°53′0.741″N 51°0′21.843″E / 43.88353917°N 51.00606750°E / 43.88353917; 51.00606750
Aircraft
Aircraft typeEmbraer E190AR
Aircraft nameGusar
OperatorAzerbaijan Airlines
IATA flight No.J28243
ICAO flight No.AHY8243
Call signAZAL 8243
Registration4K-AZ65
Flight originHeydar Aliyev International Airport, Baku, Azerbaijan
DestinationKadyrov Grozny International Airport, Chechnya, Russia
Occupants67
Passengers62
Crew5
Fatalities38
Injuries29
Survivors32

Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Grozny, Russia, which was operated by Azerbaijan Airlines. On 25 December 2024, the Embraer E190 operating the route crashed near Aqtau International Airport, Kazakhstan, with 62 passengers and 5 crew on board, according to local sources.

Russian news agencies said that the plane had been flying from Baku to Grozny in the Russian republic of Chechnya, but had been rerouted due to fog in Grozny. The plane reportedly squawked 7700 on its transponder signalling an emergency on board while flying over the Caspian Sea, with preliminary reports from Russia's aviation authority suggesting the incident may have been caused by a bird strike, although survivors reported an explosion and shrapnel hitting the aircraft. In total, 38 people died in the accident, including both pilots; 29 people survived.

Background

Aircraft

The aircraft involved, which was manufactured in 2013, was an Embraer E190AR registered as 4K-AZ65 with serial number 19000630 and was named Gusar. It was powered by two General Electric CF34-10E6 engines, and underwent its last maintenance on 18 October 2024. It made its first flight on 24 July 2013 and was owned by Azerbaijan Airlines. Since July 2013, the aircraft was operated by the airline, except from 2017 to 2023 when it flew under the airline's low cost virtual airline subsidiary Buta Airways. The aircraft was 11.6 years old at the time of the accident.

Passengers and crew

The aircraft was carrying 62 passengers and 5 crew members. Thirty-seven people were Azerbaijani citizens, 16 were Russian citizens, 6 were Kazakhstani citizens, and 3 were Kyrgyz citizens. The remaining five were crew members, who were all Azerbaijanis. Four minors were on board. Of the 67 people on board, 29 survived, and 38 died. Three of the five crew members survived, while both pilots died in the accident. The 29 survivors, including two children, were hospitalised following the accident. Eleven of them were in a critical condition. Captain Igor Kshnyakin was the pilot in command.

Nationalities
Country Passengers Crew Total Survived Reference
Azerbaijan 37 5 42 17
Kazakhstan 6 — 6 —
Kyrgyzstan 3 — 3 3
Russia 16 — 16 9
Total 62 5 67 29

Accident

Recorded route of the flight. Where the line is translucent, locational data was not sent by the aircraft

The aircraft took off from Baku International Airport at 07:55 Azerbaijan Time (UTC+04:00) on a flight to Grozny Airport. According to flight tracking service Flightradar24, the aircraft was "exposed to strong GPS jamming and spoofing" while flying near Grozny. GPS jamming has been a known issue on long-haul flights and has been encountered while entering Russian airspace. Multiple checklists were made to handle such jamming.

The aircraft was diverted to Makhachkala's Uytash Airport in Dagestan, Russia due to poor weather in Grozny. However the weather in Makhackala was also poor and the aircraft was unable to land, diverting to Aktau, Kazakhstan. The aircraft had been cruising at about 30,000 feet (9,144 m) when it disappeared from radar coverage at 08:40 local time (04:40 UTC) before reappearing off the coast of Kazakhstan at around 10:07 local time (06:07 UTC).

The crew gave a distress signal by squawking 7700 on its transponder, at 09:35 local time (UTC+05:00) and reported a failure of the control system. Then at 09:49, the pilots requested an emergency landing in Aqtau International Airport in Aktau, Kazakhstan and tried to make it in direct mode. The plane then reappeared on radar at 10:07, flying over the Caspian Sea toward Aktau, significantly off its usual flight path. At 10:28, the airplane struck the ground, with its right wing hitting first. It then tumbled, exploded, and broke into two major pieces. The explosion combined with the fire that broke out after the plane crashed destroyed the front section of the plane. The tail section of the plane came to rest upside down away from the main wreckage, and remained largely intact. The accident was captured on video, which showed that the landing gear was deployed when the plane hit the ground.

Preliminary information from Rosaviatsia suggested that the request for emergency landing was due to colliding with a flock of birds. Images from the scene showed significant perforating holes on the tail surfaces, and survivors of the accident reported hearing an explosion followed by shrapnel hitting the plane and some passengers. The crew had reported a strong impact on the fuselage from what was initially assumed to have been birds. Later, Kazakhstan's emergency services reported that an oxygen cylinder on board might have exploded.

Aftermath

Following the accident, a state of emergency was declared in Tupkaragan District, where the aircraft crashed. A total of 482 emergency response personnel, 97 pieces of special equipment, 10 canine brigades, and two aircraft were deployed to the accident site. Additional doctors were flown in from Astana to treat the injured. The Blood Center of the Mangystau Region reached out to the public, asking that healthy individuals donate blood. Soon after, residents of Aktau arrived at the center to donate their blood. with around 300 participating. Residents of Astana have also lined up at the city's blood center to donate blood. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations flew equipment and medical workers to Kazakhstan to help with the response to the accident. The ministry later said that it would airlift Russian nationals injured in the incident to Moscow. A crisis centre was established at the Russian consulate in Oral, while diplomatic staff were also sent to the accident site. Representatives from the Azerbaijani consulate in Aktau were also deployed to the accident site. A special medical team and related equipment were also dispatched from Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan Airlines suspended its Baku-Grozny-Baku and Baku-Makhachkala-Baku flights for the duration of the investigation. It also opened a hotline for relatives of those on board and changed its social media profiles to black as a sign of mourning.

Flight recorders

On the day of the accident, the aircraft's flight recorders were located by a search team.

Reactions

Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the American, British, French, Lithuanian and Israeli embassies, and the Georgian, Romanian and Turkish foreign ministries expressed their condolences to Azerbaijan over the plane crash. Flowers were also laid at the Azerbaijani embassy in Astana in mourning for the victims.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was on an aircraft heading to the Commonwealth of Independent States summit in Saint Petersburg, Russia when news of the accident broke out, leading him to return to Baku, where he held an emergency meeting on the accident shortly after landing at Baku airport. He declared a day of national mourning for 26 December. First lady and vice president Mehriban Aliyeva also expressed condolences.

Investigation

Both Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan opened commissions to investigate the disaster. The Kazakh commission was headed by deputy prime minister Kanat Bozumbayev, while Kazakh emergencies minister Chingis Arinov also visited Aktau. The Azerbaijani commission was headed by Prime Minister Ali Asadov. Azerbaijan sent a delegation consisting of its emergency situations minister, deputy general prosecutor, and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines to Aktau to conduct an on-site investigation. Sources close to the investigation claimed that while nearing Grozny, surviving passengers stated that they had heard an explosion followed by what was described as shrapnel hitting and penetrating the aircraft.

Hypotheses

On the morning of 25 December, at around 07:25 local time (04:25 UTC), ongoing UAV attacks were reported in Grozny allegedly by Ukrainian forces. Shortly afterward, at 09:35 local time (06:35 UTC), the crew of a passenger plane issued a distress signal by squawking 7700 on its transponder. According to Flightradar24, the aircraft encountered GPS jamming, with invalid ADS-B position data starting at 04:25 UTC due to significant interference.

Damage to the plane included shrapnel marks on the vertical stabilizer and wings, suggesting an explosion nearby. Witness accounts reported injuries, with one woman wounded in the leg and another witness's life jacket pierced by shrapnel. It was hypothesized by military analyst Yan Matveyev that Russian anti-aircraft systems, possibly the Pantsir-S1, may have mistaken the plane for a UAV due to a failure in the "friend-or-foe" identification system. Speaking to Türkiye Today, aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia challenged the bird strike hypothesis, saying "You can lose control of the plane, but you don’t fly wildly off course as a consequence." Türkiye Today noted that "The concentration of puncture holes in the tail section suggests a possible loss of hydraulic systems, similar to the United Airlines Flight 232 accident." Militarnyi also noted similarities between this flight and an Ilyushin Il-22PP damaged by an anti-aircraft missile, stating that "one can see the similarity of damage and the number of holes in the hull, which probably indicates damage by a high-explosive fragment." Meduza similarly described evidence suggesting that the jet was hit by Russian air defence.

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