Azerbaijan's flag carrier announced Friday that it will suspend flights to several Russian airports, citing potential flight safety risks after a crash of one of its planes that many experts blamed on Russian air defense fire.
Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons still unclear and crashed while making an attempt to land in Aktau in Kazakhstan after flying east across the Caspian Sea. The crash killed 38 people and left all 29 survivors injured.
Authorities in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia were tight-lipped about a possible cause of the crash pending an official probe, but a lawmaker in Azerbaijan blamed Moscow. Rasim Musabekov told the Azerbaijani news agency Turan on Thursday that the plane was fired on while in the skies over Grozny, and urged Russia to offer an official apology.
Asked about Musabekov's statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment, saying that it will be up to investigators to determine the cause of the crash.
“The air incident is being investigated and we don't believe we have the right to make any assessments until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters.
Investigators from Azerbaijan are working in Grozny as part of the crash probe, Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s office said in a statement.
As the official crash probe started, some aviation experts pointed out that holes seen in the plane’s tail section suggested that it could have come under fire from Russian air defense systems fending off a Ukrainian drone attack.
Ukrainian drones had previously attacked Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, and other regions in the country’s North Caucasus. An official in Chechnya said another drone attack on the region was fended off on Wednesday, although federal authorities didn’t report it.
FlightRadar24 said in an online post that the aircraft had faced “strong GPS jamming” that interfered with flight tracking data. Russia has extensively used sophisticated jamming equipment to fend off drone attacks.
Following Wednesday's suspension of flights from Baku to Grozy and Makhachkala, Azerbaiajan Airlines on Friday also halted service to more Russian cities, cutting air links to Mineralnye Vody, Sochi, Volgograd, Ufa, Samara.
It said in a statement that the flights will be suspended “following the preliminary results of the investigation into the crash of the Embraer 190 aircraft operating flight J2-8243 from Baku to Grozny, caused by physical and technical interference, and considering potential risks to flight safety.”
The company will continue to operate flights to six other Russian cities including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kazan. Those cities also have been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian drone strikes in the past.
Kazakhstan's Qazaq Air also announced Friday that it was suspending flights from Astana to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains for a month.
The day before, Israeli El Al suspended flights from Tel Aviv to Moscow citing “developments in Russia’s airspace." The airline said it would reassess the situation next week to decide whether to resume the flights.
__
Associated Press writer Aida Sultanova contributed to this report from London.
