Flight J2-8243 was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A combination of visual evidence and eyewitness accounts suggests that the Embraer plane belonging to Azerbaijan’s AZAL airline, which left Baku on Wednesday, December 25, was targeted over Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya, Russia, its original destination.
Even stranger, the aircraft, seriously damaged, was ordered to redirect itself 450 kilometers further to Aktaou airport, on the other side of the Caspian Sea. Gradually losing control of the aircraft, the pilots attempted to land on a road a few kilometers from the airstrip. But the plane, which was descending too rapidly, collided violently with the ground, forming a fireball. Thirty-eight people were killed in the disaster, and 29 survived, some with serious injuries. It is not known whether any of the five crew members survived, but it is likely that the pilots died, as the front section of the plane was destroyed. Kazakhstan authorities reported that the aircraft’s black boxes have been recovered.
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