An Azerbaijani flight J2-8243, carrying 62 people, crashed off the coast of the Caspian Sea near Aktau in Kazakhstan on December 25. While Azerbaijan mourns the tragic loss of life, a spate of theories have started to swirl on the internet, some suggesting Russia’s role in the devastating crash.
The aircraft was traveling from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Grozny, Russia. However, as it approached Grozny, it was redirected to the Aktau airport in Kazakhstan due to foggy conditions that made landing impossible.
Unfortunately, the aircraft crashed just 3 kilometers from Aktau, killing 38 people on board. Footage circulating online shows the aircraft making a high-speed steep descent with its landing gear down and bursting into flames as it hits the ground.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev told a press conference that the aircraft had to change course due to inclement weather but emphasized that it was too soon to speculate on the cause of the crash.
“The information provided to me is that the plane changed its course between Baku and Grozny due to worsening weather conditions and headed to Aktau airport, where it crashed upon landing,” the President told the press.
Another footage that has been extensively shared on social media shows the plane lying upside down with a portion of its fuselage torn away from the wings and the rest of the aircraft. The bloodied crash survivors can be seen dragging themselves out from the wreckage of the airliner.
Both pilots of the aircraft, who are among the dead, have been lauded for their bravery in trying to save the plane by attempting multiple climbs and dives before going down.
While the crash is currently under investigation, several theories and speculations have emerged online. According to Rosaviatsia, Russia’s civil aviation authority, initial data indicates that the pilots re-routed to Aktau following an onboard issue caused by a bird hit.
Meanwhile, shortly after the aircraft crashed, a flight-tracking site, ‘FlightRadar24,’ said that it had experienced “strong GPS jamming,” which “made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data,” i.e., the data that flight-tracking websites use to track airplanes while they are in flight. This created a stir on social media, with several netizens pointing out that Russia has been jamming GPS signals in certain European regions, leading to disruption.
Another theory that has gained widespread traction online suggests that a Russian surface-to-air missile shot the aircraft. Citing holes on the fuselage that looked like they had been caused by bullet fire or shrapnel, several aviation experts and military bloggers on social media speculated that the aircraft was most certainly engaged by Russian air defense units while approaching Grozny. They also referred to testimony from survivors about hearing a loud explosion before the crash.
Intriguingly, the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Andrii Kovalenko, said: “This morning, the Embraer 190 aircraft of Azerbaijan Airlines, flying from Baku to Grozny, was shot down by a Russian air defense system.”
He added that the aircraft was shot down during a suspected drone attack and remarked that the accident happened because the Russians failed to close their airspace. Some military bloggers wrote on X that air raid sirens were ringing as the doomed airliner approached Grozny.
None of these claims could be independently verified.
Aviation experts, however, believe that the crash likely resulted from compounding technical failures. Indian Air Force veteran and military expert Group Capt MJ Augustine Vinod VSM (retd) said that the key factors that could have caused the crash were inclement weather or foggy conditions, fuel mismanagement, and disruptions in the GPS.
He suggested that due to foggy conditions, the pilots of the doomed airliner had to divert to Aktau, Kazakhstan. However, it experienced some jamming and spoofing of the GPS at the time, causing it to deviate from its intended path.
That deviation might have led to additional fuel consumption. The airplane’s fuel reserves were likely very low by the time the aircraft made a detour to Aktau. He speculated that the aircraft may have run out of fuel before crashing near Aktau.
Authorities in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia are investigating the crash.
“An investigative team, led by the deputy prosecutor general of Azerbaijan, has been dispatched to Kazakhstan and is working at the crash site,” the Prosecutor General’s Office in Azerbaijan said.
The plane’s black box, a flight recorder used by investigators to identify the causes of aviation accidents, has been located, according to Azertac, the state news agency of Azerbaijan.
Group Captain MJ told EurAsian Times that while some suggest the incident had Russian involvement, it will be years before the truth will come out.
Russia Is Under The Scanner, Once Again
Though the authorities have not hinted at a missile strike for the Azerbaijani aircraft crash, the latest incident has nonetheless reignited memories of the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, which was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
The devastating incident took place on July 17, 2014, when a Russian-origin surface-to-air missile shot down a passenger airplane over the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk during the War in Donbas, killing all 298 people on board. The incident was attributed to Moscow-backed separatists in the region.
An investigation was launched into the incident by the International Joint Investigation Team (JIT). The team determined in 2016 that a Buk anti-aircraft missile system from the 53rd Air Defense Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces based in Kursk was responsible for downing the aircraft.
These findings confirmed the previous intelligence from the US and Germany. However, they were refuted by Russia, which has continued to deny involvement in the shooting down of the aircraft.
More recently, Russia has come under the scanner for GPS jamming of aircraft, which poses a massive risk to aviation safety.
Earlier this year, media reports indicated that several British airlines frequently encountered interference in GPS. Many incidents of this interference occurred in the Baltic region alone, causing concern about potential fatal incidents.
The matter came to a head in March when the UK government acknowledged that while flying close to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave in the Baltic region, an RAF aircraft carrying Defense Secretary Grant Shapps encountered GPS signal jamming.
The head of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Luc Tytgat, underlined the gravity of the situation in January this year, highlighting a sharp rise in attacks of this nature that jeopardized flight safety. The core of these attacks is the capacity to interfere with and skew GPS signals, which are essential for precise aviation navigation.
One technique employed is jamming, which involves overpowering authentic signals from satellite systems like GPS and Europe’s Galileo, rendering them unusable. Meanwhile, spoofing deceives aircraft by transmitting false signals, misleading them about their location.
In a previous article for the EurAsian Times, retired group captain TP Srivastava highlighted the subtlety of spoofing attacks, noting that they can introduce small errors into navigation systems that may initially go unnoticed by pilots. However, these false signals can lead an aircraft off course or provide inaccurate positional data, endangering the aircraft.
Some Western experts have also highlighted that Russia has a history of employing GPS jamming as a means of “harassment.”
Though it is too soon to confirm a Russian role in the Azerbaijan crash, there is an overwhelming majority of people who suspect Russia’s nefarious methods may have contributed to the tragedy.
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