Plane crash in Kazakhstan killed dozens, but nearly half of those on board survived, officials say

Moscow — An Azerbaijani airliner with 67 people on board crashed Wednesday in western Kazakhstan, near the city of Aktau, killing 38 people and leaving 29 survivors, a Kazakh official said.

Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbaev disclosed the figures while meeting with Azerbaijani officials, the Russian news agency Interfax reported. 

Azerbaijan Airlines said 67 people were on board — 62 passengers and five crew members. Interfax quoted emergency workers at the scene as saying a preliminary assessment showed both pilots died in the crash.

The Embraer 190 aircraft attempted to make an emergency landing roughly two miles from Aktau, Azerbaijan Airlines said. A spokesperson for Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency said preliminary information showed the pilot had chosen to divert to Aktau after a bird strike led to “an emergency situation on board.”

Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry initially said 25 people survived the crash, later revising that number to 27, 28 and then 29 as the search and rescue operation continued at the site of the crash, bringing the apparent death toll down.

The Prosecutor General’s Office in Azerbaijan reported earlier that at least 32 people had survived the crash, but said the number wasn’t final.

According to Kazakh officials, those aboard the plane included 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhs and three Kyrgyzstan nationals. 

The plane was originally scheduled to travel from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus. Russian news agencies said the plane had been rerouted due to fog in Grozny, Reuters reported.

Interfax reported that Kazakh authorities said they’d started probing possible causes of the crash, including a technical problem, according to Reuters.  

Mobile phone footage circulating online appeared to show the aircraft making a steep descent before smashing into the ground in a fireball. Crews put out the blaze at the site, the emergency ministry said.

Other footage showed part of its fuselage ripped away from the wings and the rest of the aircraft lying upside in the grass. The footage corresponded to the plane’s colors and its registration number.

Some of the videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging fellow passengers away from the plane’s wreckage.

Unverified video showed people stumbling from a piece of the fuselage that remained intact, Reuters reported. 

Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed the aircraft making what appeared to be a figure-right as it neared the airport in Aktau, its altitude moving up and down substantially over the last minutes of the flight before impacting the ground.

FlightRadar24 separately said in an online post that the aircraft had faced “strong GPS jamming” which ” made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data,” referring to the information that enables flight-tracking websites to follow planes in flight. Russia has been blamed in the past for jamming GPS transmissions in the wider region.

Embraer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday morning. In a statement, Azerbaijan Airlines said it would keep members of the public updated and changed its social media banners to solid black.