MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Azerbaijan Airlines E-190's back boxes sent to Brazil

Kazakhstan authorities decided to send the black boxes to Brazil's Cenipa for analysis

Authorities said that the black boxes of the Brazilian-built Embraer 190 Azerbaijan Airlines jet that crashed on Wednesday in Kazakhstan will be sent to the manufacturing country's aviation watchdog to further investigate the causes of the accident near Aktau, a port on the Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan, far from the aircraft's planned route.

Kazakhstan's Accident Investigation Commission ”decided to send the flight recorders (black boxes) to the Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) in Brazil, which is also the country that manufactures Embraer aircraft,” the local Transport Ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has called his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, to express his condolences for the accident. Putin offered an apology for the fact that an incident originated “in Russian airspace.” He added that it occurred during a Ukrainian drone raid.

“The Azerbaijani passenger plane, which arrived on schedule, made repeated attempts to land at the airport in Grozny,” the statement said. The capital of Russia’s Chechen Republic, as well as other cities in the region, “were being attacked by Ukrainian combat drones at the time, and Russian air defenses were repelling those attacks,” Moscow argued.

Putin “reiterated his deep and earnest condolences to the families of the people who were killed, and wished the survivors a swift recovery,” in his conversation with President Aliyev.

The Russian Investigative Committee was probing the incident for possible violations of air traffic safety rules, the Kremlin also said.

Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 from Baku to Grozny diverted to Kazakhstan and crashed. The carrier mentioned “physical and technical external interference” in the incident resulting in 38 of the 67 people on board killed.

Officials in Chechnya reported a Ukrainian drone raid on Grozny on Wednesday, stating that all of the aircraft were shot down. On the same day, a Ukrainian drone hit a shopping mall in the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz, killing a woman and causing significant damage.

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview Sunday that the aircraft “was damaged from the outside on Russian territory, near the city of Grozny, and almost got out of control.”

“We are also aware that our aircraft was rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare means... In addition, the tail section of the plane was severely damaged by fire from the ground,” he added.

Aliyev noted that the exact circumstances of the crash would become known after the data from flight recorders sent to Brazil is accessed.