Azerbaijan pays tribute to pilots and passengers who perished in air crash
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The pilots have been lauded in Azerbaijan for landing in a way that allowed 29 people to survive but led to their own deaths.
PHOTO: REUTERS
BAKU, Azerbaijan – Azerbaijan on Dec 29 paid tribute to the pilots and passengers of the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane that crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people, after Russian air defences were used against Ukrainian drones.
Flight J2-8243 crashed on Dec 25 in a ball of fire near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from southern Russia, where Ukrainian drones were attacking several cities.
Captain Igor Kshnyakin and co-pilot Alexander Kalyaninov, both ethnic Russians with Azerbaijan citizenship, and Ms Hokuma Aliyeva, a flight attendant, were given full honours at a ceremony at the Alley of Honour in central Baku attended by President Ilham Aliyev and his wife, Mehriban.
The pilots have been lauded in Azerbaijan for landing in a way that allowed 29 people to survive but led to their own deaths.
Azerbaijan’s presidential office said that after the yet-to-be explained incident over Russian airspace, the pilots battled to control the plane, desperately trying to find a landing spot.
With holes in the fuselage, some crew injured, passengers praying for their lives in a de-pressurised cabin and the plane spiralling out of control, the pilots flew across the Caspian Sea towards their death in a crash landing.
“Only through the courage and professionalism of the pilots was an emergency landing successfully carried out,” Azerbaijan’s presidential office said.
The Alley of Honour is Azerbaijan’s most sacred modern burial ground, where prominent politicians, poets and scientists are laid to rest, including Mr Heydar Aliyev, the late father of the current president.
Captain Kshnyakin’s daughter, Ms Anastasia Kshnyakina, said her father was a dedicated pilot who took his responsibilities to his passengers extremely seriously.
“My father always said: ‘When I take off, I am responsible not only for my life, but also for the lives of all passengers and crew members,’” Ms Kshnyakina said.
“With his last flight, he proved what a true hero should be,” she added.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Dec 28 apologised to Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev for a “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving the plane that Baku said crashed after some sort of external interference.
Four sources with knowledge of the preliminary findings of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the disaster said on Dec 26 that Russian air defences mistakenly shot it down.
The extremely rare publicised apology from Mr Putin was the closest Moscow has come to accepting some blame for the Dec 25 disaster, although the Kremlin statement did not say Russia shot down the plane, only noting that a criminal case had been opened.
The Embraer passenger jet flew from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny, in Russia’s southern Chechnya region, before veering off hundreds of kilometres across the Caspian Sea. REUTERS
