According to Azerbaijan Airlines, 37 passengers were Azerbaijani citizens. There were also 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhstani and three Kyrgyzstani citizens.
An Azerbaijan Airlines crashed on Wednesday morning in the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan’s emergency ministry said that at least 32 people of the 67 on board the Embraer 190 survived, meaning that over 30 are likely dead.
The ministry initially said 25 people survived the crash, later revising that number to 27, 28 and 29 as the search and rescue operation continued at the site of the crash. The number was not final, according to authorities.
Flight 8432 travelling from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to Grozny in Russia made an emergency landing some 3 kilometres from Aktau after reportedly colliding with a flock of birds, according to preliminary reports from the airline.
More than 50 first responders and 11 units of equipment from the Kazakhstan emergency ministry were deployed to the crash site.
According to Azerbaijan Airlines, 37 passengers were Azerbaijani citizens. There were also 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhstani and three Kyrgyzstani citizens.
Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24 showed the aircraft making what appeared to be a figure-eight once nearing the airport in Aktau. Its altitude moved 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 allows flight-tracking websites to follow planes in flight.
Social media videos gathered by AnewZ news channel appear to show the aircraft struggling to make an emergency landing and breaking up in a fireball as it hits the ground.
Embraer did not 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.
Azerbaijan’s state news agency, Azertac, said that an official delegation consisting of the country’s emergency situations minister, the deputy general prosecutor, and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines had been dispatched to Aktau to conduct an “on-site investigation”.