The shrapnel damage is pretty much established as there are multiple videos from inside the plane during this flight prior to the crash and you can see shrapnel damage on the fuselage. The survivors are also confirming it, and report that there was a bang(which might be confused for bird strike).
The question is, who shot the plane? This part is pure speculation at this point.
> The question is, who shot the plane? This part is pure speculation at this point.
It doesn't seem to be too difficult to put together what is likely. Grozny was under active drone attack at the time with air defenses working. And Russian air defense crews are pretty infamous for the jumpy trigger fingers at this point.
And notably, the "drones" were civilian propeller aircraft fitted out to fly an unmanned suicide trajectory. I'm not sure they would even look all that distinguishable on a SAM operator's screen from a small jet like this.
The Airliner has a transponder and a radio. Pretty sure the drone does not.
The transponder code, assigned by various ATC would identify that aircraft as a civilian airliner when it checks in, and on the screens of the SAM operators.
Also, the speed and altitude of the airliner, even approaching Grozny would not be the same as a drone. Airliners, even on approach, are somewhat faster, probably 200-250mph, or faster, and much higher in altitude, at least 5000ft, probably more like 10,000ft until close to the airport.
Out of curiosity, why wouldn't a hostile power also put a transponder on their drone (maybe one even replaying a nearby plane's code)? Surely that could help it blend in and avoid defenses
More importantly, it's not uncommon when crossing Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) regions (eg. from Washington Center, to NY Center) for controllers to instruct pilots to change Squawk codes. Same applies when crossing from one country's airspace to another.
One of these drones, without a bunch of extra avionics would be unable to change transponder codes in flight, and talk with controllers via relay, that would probably double the cost of the drone, or at least significantly increase it.
So even doing something creative, like spoofing the transponder Squawk code, from another aircraft, probably wouldn't help.
Also, with Mode-C, and Mode-S transponders, the later used with ADS-B, which feeds all the flight tracking websites, the transponder transmits altitude.
A SAM operator will figure out somewhat quickly if an airliner is supposed to be at 10,000ft and 250mph but isn't according to primary radar tracking, but much lower and slower, that it's spoofing it's transponder.
A regional jet on approach and a prop aircraft in cruise don't necessarily look that different in ground speeds, altitudes, or even radar cross section to most radars.
This is the Russia war coming home to roost. They better admit that they are engaged in an actual war, and stop allowing civilian aircraft in areas that are attacked frequently.
These "drones" are more like enclosed ultralights, heavily loaded, 50-80mph, which an airliner would have already stalled at and be dropping out of the sky.
Ukraine is modifying a large variety of smaller aircraft to be suicide drones. Yes, A-22s/A-33s are used which cruise at like 100-120MPH or so (though there's been some talk of turboprop conversions of the same, too). But other small civilian aircraft which cruise at more like 160MPH have been employed, versus a late approach speed of the Embraer of 180-190MPH or so.
And remember, radars vary groundspeed, which can easily vary by +/- 25MPH from actual (and will be reading the Embraer's speed on the low side).
It's one of the reason Russia was very hesitant to shoot them down initially. Some of the planes were cessna and similar single engine prop planes that were loaded with explosives and remote controller:
My brother is flying to Japan tomorrow and we were talking about how the flight has gotten longer because of all the active war zones that they can't fly over any more.
Itavia 870 comes to mind: In the 80ies, a fighter jet was being smuggled to Gaddafi by hiding under a civilian aircraft, and the speculation is that France shot the convoy, killing 81. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itavia_Flight_870
The aircraft was sent away / prohibited from landing after reporting the explosion over Grozny, and had to divert to Kazakhstan to land without real pitch control.
The pilots probably should have ignored that. There’s no such thing as “denying landing clearance” to an aircraft experiencing an emergency. There’s only “get out of the way of the incoming emergency.” But I can’t blame them for not wanting to take their chances when they were just shot by local air defense.
The more obvious explanation would be that air controllers surmised that it was at risk of being shot at again if it continued attempting a landing in Grozny and the safest thing to do was to divert it out of Russia.
Regional air traffic control is in Rostov (on-Don) - you’d think they’d at least be able to get the military controllers at Rostov (Southern military district HQ) on the horn?
Assuming they have an established channel of communication, yes they would have, but imagine trying to communicate to them which blip on the radar screen is an actual civilian aircraft, and hoping they're able to track it and make sure they only fire on other targets.
In particular some of the damage has a "linear" quality that could plausibly come from a continuous rod warhead, which would be typical for a system like Pantsir. If as the Russians claim, it was a bird-strike, you wouldn't expect debris from the failure of the engine to make a pattern like that on the tail, unless the entire engine body broke apart.
Likewise, it didn't look like it was on a glide path, but rather that as discussed the hydraulics failed and they has to use thrust vectoring to fly. Obviously for very fine correction on final approach that becomes difficult, and the result was what we saw. All of that is consistent with a missile.
I'm from the area, near Grozny. If Grozny were under fog, there are at least 10 airports nearby (Makhachkala, Vladikavkaz, Nalchik, Minvody, Rostov, Krasnodar etc) in the North Caucasus. Why would you fly east, across the Caspian Sea, toward Kazakhstan?
Obviously just speculation but if one was just fired upon, yet still in one piece and at least somewhat in control, a pilot might decide braving a longer diversion over a body of water to get away from the area, might be the safest course of action.
Also if you have control issues and a forced depressurization it might be best to avoid obstructions (like the Caucasus mountains) and significant course adjustments.
But from what I'm seeing the actual answer is that they were denied landing clearance, which is a bit suspicious.
My guess, they picked an airport they knew well, that they could probably navigate to with nothing more than a compass and landmarks. And if they suspected GPS jamming (personally, a dual GPS failure over Russia would be my first guess) they would be biased towards an airport far away from an active war zone.
I am curious why they didn't divert back to their departure airport at Baku. It's roughly the same distance and surely they knew that airport even better, and could just follow the coastline back. Maybe by the time they had the plane under control they were already much closer to Aktau.
If I was a pilot flying into an at-war country I’d want my alternate to point in a different direction, the exact opposite course of the war zone ideally. Which this pretty much is.
And, to further that point, multiple airports you listed here are currently closed because of that war.
I just checked the transcript I've seen floating out there, the first alternate was Baku, i.e. their departure airport. Then Mineralnye Vody (which is some way to the west), then Makhachkala, then they seemed to go far to the east, so while I think the first option was Baku - matching what I said, the list of options pretty quickly became 'anywhere'. What a harrowing flight.
> The Grozny airport reportedly denied landing permission to the AZAL plane, and the aircraft was also refused permission to land at airports in Makhachkala and Mineralnye Vody.
Anyone else notice an influx of these new accounts in the last couple of years that start rapidly spamming inflammatory replies that seem to be trying to incite arguments (look at this ^ account's comments in the last hour)? HN is a bastion of mostly western, intelligent discourse. I'm really starting to wonder - is it under attack?
Has been for a while. Most articles critical of Russia end up getting flagged pretty quickly and also tend to get flooded with posts from accounts created 5 minutes prior.
Vice signalizing? Intentionally displaying one's flaws/vices? I really don't think that's what this is. I think this is someone or a bot that is trying to get people to react with anger, in hopes that it catches on and causes wider arguments in the thread/social platform. It's very similar to what foreign influence/disinformation campaigns are doing in western societies, but targeted at online societies.
The entire region was the zone of active air defence and Vladikavkaz was surely not an option given the drone strike that damaged a shopping mall there. My only question here is why there were any civilian flights at the moment. They should have been diverted.
It might be "technically probably not true," but no it's not hyperbole. If anything it's an understatement. Actually what the incoming administration did is publicly asked adversarial foreign intelligence services to hack and disrupt the election campaign of an American political opponent.
And then those intelligence services actually did just that pretty much the same day.
They literally aren’t. And Russia being a boogeyman that both sides claim the other is in cahoots with is exhausting. And the premise that communicating with someone means you endorse their actions. It’s all just lazy
Are you writing this message from 2014 or 2024? Hard to tell.
I don’t believe I (or you) from a position of comfort have the answers. I believe that western democracies should trust their partners on the frontlines to decide when and how to find peace with an invader, as they know more than we do.
How close to war does one need to be for their opinion on this to be valid?
A Shaheed drone flew over my head just less than two months ago. Does that qualify?
In case it does — don’t be so naïve. Of course the russians want more. They’ve made that clear enough. Their heads of state have made that clear enough. Repeatedly. For years.
We can only hope. Unfortunately there are some disturbing parallels to WWI - there is a sizeable contingent in the US who won't admit they made a mistake on this one. It'll be like the Germans all over again, a big well armed population who don't understand that they'll lose even more if they stir up a big conflict. Even if Trump manages to put a lid on the current conflict I'm not hopeful it'll be enough to pacify the warmongers even in the medium term. There is a lot of work to be done. It has been unreal to watch the US muck up European security so badly. They are now also in a really bad position vs. China, they've secured it a well resourced ally to the north for no reason at all.
It is no mystery how Trump outmanoeuvres these people, they have the strategic acumen of a stunned fish.
Military incidents are very different. While all civilian planes carry transponders that identify them as such [1], military planes usually don't for obvious reasons, so they're much easier to misidentify as hostile.
(There are better videos, but I can't seem to find them again.)
There are reports that the plane was forced to divert course and fly over water after being hit. They were close to landing but were forced to reroute in the middle of their emergency.
This whole thing feels more and more like a terrible nightmarish mash-up between MH17 and UA232. Every indication so far is that the flight crew here are absolute heroes for bringing down the plane as well as they did and it's likely that they should be remembered as heroically saving these lives, even if not their own.
It's actually not terribly uncommon for crashes like this to be survivable, it just comes down to how shallow the decline ends up being and whether part of the fuselage snaps off and can get away from the burning fuel.
A turbine blade or a few coming off can have the same effect as a bomb going off near the plane.
The pieces would tear through the plane like shrapnel from a weapon.
Military anti air missiles tend to use continuous rods to slice planes in half instead of fragmentation warheads that leave small holes. The aim is to sever control lines, not merely to puncture.
Several anti-aircraft systems can and do use fragmentation warheads. The BUK that shot down MH17 used one and the impact patterns are strikingly similar. Take a look at the “Reconstruction” section in this: https://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/ntsb/miscell...
They did in the past but they are designed now to disintegrate without taking the rest of the plane with them. Not that something unusual couldn't happen, but the engines are tested on this very thoroughly, based on previous accidents. Even when it has gone wrong in recent times it hasn't been catastrophic.
> A turbine blade or a few coming off can have the same effect as a bomb going off near the plane.
Not in any passenger jet Embraer would get caught dead making. To my knowledge, most jet engines that are parallel to passenger sections require cowling that is reinforced to withstand a blade going loose.
In a weird coincidence, this morning I watched an old video about the Iranian airliner downed by a US missile in the Persian gulf. These accidents are just horrible.
> There is a possibility that the Azerbaijani passenger plane flying from Baku to Grozny was shot down by Russian air defense.
> At least, the holes in the tail section look like traces of the striking elements of an anti-aircraft missile.
> Surviving passenger of the plane Subhonkul Rakhimov said that the pilots tried to land the plane in Grozny three times: "The third time, something exploded. There was an explosion - I seemed to me that it was not inside the plane."
Ok, well you’ll have to help me out with your good vs. evil decoder ring because all three of those countries are allies with each other so I’m still not clear who we’re supposed to be white knighting for here.
What are the options? The war in Ukraine is a land war of attrition. They need more soldiers. Many Ukraninians evade military service and are instead refugees in the EU.
Sending NATO troops to do their work seems strange, especially considering that we are talking about a relatively small piece of land in Eastern Ukraine. And no, Putin will not go for Lisboa if he still does not manage to occupy the whole of Donetsk.
Do you blame NATO for not recapturing North Korea?
They need equipment too, lots of it. The west for example sent only token amount of tanks. It's slightly better in some categories like towed artillery but not nearly enough. People who disagree simply don't understand the scale of this war.
Night vision would be huge. If you've ever seen videos of soldiers with night vision engaging those without, it's slaughter. And that's exactly what we need, kill ratios of tens to one to make Russia really pay for their aggression.
If they wanna send flesh against steel, make them bleed out. And when they start conscripting in big cities, maybe those "poor" "innocent" Russians will finally do something about their government.
>And when they start conscripting in big cities, maybe those "poor" "innocent" Russians will finally do something about their government.
no guns. and that's why your benevolent overlords want to take your guns away too.
I see these snarky reddity comments all the time, and you people seriously fail to grasp the difference between authoritarian shitholes like Russia and China and your glorious liberal democracies, where your cities burn while cops stand around doing nothing because the local government is terrified of bad optics. in Russia, civil unrest gets put down with extreme prejudice.
a regime like that can only fail when even its eunuch servants and attack dogs aren't getting paid and fed. otherwise, your imaginary revolutionaries with sticks, stones and molotovs will get mowed down en masse, the survivors will get 15 years in gulag, and all without a peep from the local media.
Why the obsession with military response? In my view, there is a lot of ground between “do nothing” and “put NATO boots on the ground”. Including a ton of asymmetric / deniable actions.
False dichotomies like this are very questionable.
Of course you won't because you can't. Keep sending Ukraine money and materials, so they'll keep cosplaying 9/11 as long as they can, sending aeroprakt planes full of explosives into Russian highrise buildings. And as long as it happens, accidents with AA missiles gonna happen also. So, you guys are getting exactly what you're paying for.
> " ... as the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft was approaching to land as scheduled."
Not as scheduled. The aircraft was diverted because of unacceptable weather at its primary destination -- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwl1e6895qo : "The plane was en route to Grozny in Russia but it was diverted due to fog, the airline told the BBC."
Just saying, not excusing a hostile takedown, if that's what happened.
Diversion due to weather is a possibility anticipated by pilots, who normally carry extra fuel to accommodate the possibility of a diversion.
Ironically, because of the advent of drone attacks, a small aircraft like the Embraer 190 is more likely to be mistaken for hostile, compared to a full-size airliner.
If the pilots were aware that they had been hit by anti-aircraft defenses, and that they were in at least partial control of the aircraft, they might have concluded they were better off getting as far away as possible, just in case the AA operators try again.
There are reports of GPS jamming in the area (presumably as part of the Ukraine war). It seems plausible the pilots got lost.
Also, the time between the 'bird strike' and the crash is 20+ minutes, so they might have been trying to fly towards an airport with a larger runway or better emergency crews. Or maybe just an airport where repair crew were stationed to fix whatever was wrong with the plane.
Doubtful. The Caspian Sea is a pretty unmistakeable landmark, even from high altitude, which the pilots would have seen.
I think it was more likely that that happened to be the direction the plane was pointing when it got hit by the missile and lost control surfaces, so that is where the pilots went.
Especially since rt.com's only above-the-fold mention is "Russia-bound airliner crashes in ex-_Soviet_ state (VIDEO)". Nope, they don't need to use the word 'Kazakhstan', the 50% longer, much less descriptive but much more telling 'ex-Soviet state' is the one they're chosen.
There's a second mention above the fold on rt.com now.
"Putin extends condolences over plane crash in ex-Soviet state".
They're literally a parody of themselves. Like, what's the implication here: Shame about the accident, none of this would have happened if we were all still together in a single nation led by us?
That one is completely unrelated to Russia, but sparked a lot of theories nonetheless due to the number of strange deaths hitting people among those who were somehow related to the activities in the Mediterranean sea that night. That includes unclear strange suicides among military personnel and two of the three pilots colliding at the Ramstein airbase disaster in 1988.
> Orc (Cyrillic: орк, romanised: ork), plural orcs (Russian and Ukrainian: орки), is a pejorative commonly used by many Ukrainians to refer to a Russian soldier participating in the Russian-Ukrainian War and Russian citizens who support the aggression of Russia against Ukraine.
Let's call a spade a spade. "Orc" is a dehumanizing term that the Ukrainian military propaganda invented and popularized to make it psychologically easier for their soldiers to shoot at Russians. Because they are not dropping a grenade from a drone on a human, they are just dropping a grenade on an orc, on a monster from a video game.
For Americans in the audience, "Orc" belongs to the same category as "Jap", "Gook", "Sandn**r", and all similar dehumanizing terms that American soldiers have used to make it psychologically easier to shoot and bomb their enemies.
Dehumanizing others costs you part of your humanity. It puts you on the path toward becoming a monster. Yeah, it's only one step on that path, but the better answer is, don't start down that path.
Some people behave like monsters. You may have to kill them. But they're still people, and you still have to not dehumanize them, lest you dehumanize yourself.
Killing them is required for self-defense. What's the point of dehumanizing them? Boosting soldier morale? Would it be okay to call Japanese and Germans slurs in WW2 for the same reason? Do the ends justify the means?
>We learned about savagery from the Japanese ... But those sixteen-to-nineteen-year old kids we had on the Canal were fast learners ... At daybreak, a couple of our kids, bearded, dirty, skinny from hunger, slightly wounded by bayonets, clothes worn and torn, wack off three Jap heads and jam them on poles facing the "Jap side" of the river ... The colonel sees Jap heads on the poles and says, "Jesus men, what are you doing? You're acting like animals." A dirty, stinking young kid says, "That's right Colonel, we are animals. We live like animals, we eat and are treated like animals—what the fuck do you expect?"
I’ve seen videos of russian soldiers invading Ukraine, killing soldiers and civilians, taking prisoners, and sometimes beheading or castrating prisoners while they’re still alive.
Where is the human part of taking a knife to a man’s genitalia after you decide to invade his country?
If russians don’t want to die, they can just go home.
I’m pretty sure it’s is a shortened form of Horcasitas, from Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo, the Viceroy of New Spain who sent an exploration expedition under Francisco de Eliza to the Pacific Northwest in 1791.
I can't read through the paywall, but the numerous pictures of the skin with the metal folded in are a pretty dead giveaway that there was an explosion nearby that crippled the aircraft
Just zooming into the tail section photo one can find on main stream media shows very suspicious signs of possible shrapnel hit ...
The shrapnel damage is pretty much established as there are multiple videos from inside the plane during this flight prior to the crash and you can see shrapnel damage on the fuselage. The survivors are also confirming it, and report that there was a bang(which might be confused for bird strike).
The question is, who shot the plane? This part is pure speculation at this point.
> The question is, who shot the plane? This part is pure speculation at this point.
It doesn't seem to be too difficult to put together what is likely. Grozny was under active drone attack at the time with air defenses working. And Russian air defense crews are pretty infamous for the jumpy trigger fingers at this point.
And notably, the "drones" were civilian propeller aircraft fitted out to fly an unmanned suicide trajectory. I'm not sure they would even look all that distinguishable on a SAM operator's screen from a small jet like this.
The Airliner has a transponder and a radio. Pretty sure the drone does not.
The transponder code, assigned by various ATC would identify that aircraft as a civilian airliner when it checks in, and on the screens of the SAM operators.
Also, the speed and altitude of the airliner, even approaching Grozny would not be the same as a drone. Airliners, even on approach, are somewhat faster, probably 200-250mph, or faster, and much higher in altitude, at least 5000ft, probably more like 10,000ft until close to the airport.
Out of curiosity, why wouldn't a hostile power also put a transponder on their drone (maybe one even replaying a nearby plane's code)? Surely that could help it blend in and avoid defenses
As indicated below, it would be a war crime.
More importantly, it's not uncommon when crossing Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) regions (eg. from Washington Center, to NY Center) for controllers to instruct pilots to change Squawk codes. Same applies when crossing from one country's airspace to another.
One of these drones, without a bunch of extra avionics would be unable to change transponder codes in flight, and talk with controllers via relay, that would probably double the cost of the drone, or at least significantly increase it.
So even doing something creative, like spoofing the transponder Squawk code, from another aircraft, probably wouldn't help.
Also, with Mode-C, and Mode-S transponders, the later used with ADS-B, which feeds all the flight tracking websites, the transponder transmits altitude.
A SAM operator will figure out somewhat quickly if an airliner is supposed to be at 10,000ft and 250mph but isn't according to primary radar tracking, but much lower and slower, that it's spoofing it's transponder.
That would be too clear cut a war crime and would get the rest of the world to react rather harshly.
MH17 was shot down by Russians and nothing happened. Only harsh words.
Ukraine needs European and US support. If you are not Israel, doing easily provable war crimes is a good way to loose it.
Except.. they are not jets, terribly slow, and fly at much lower altitude.
A regional jet on approach and a prop aircraft in cruise don't necessarily look that different in ground speeds, altitudes, or even radar cross section to most radars.
The regional jet is sqwalking on ADS-B, though.
Yeah but the ADS-B transponder didn't know its own location because GPS was being jammed by the Russians to try to force the drones off course.
Why is the jet even flying in an active war zone?
This is the Russia war coming home to roost. They better admit that they are engaged in an actual war, and stop allowing civilian aircraft in areas that are attacked frequently.
These "drones" are more like enclosed ultralights, heavily loaded, 50-80mph, which an airliner would have already stalled at and be dropping out of the sky.
Ukraine is modifying a large variety of smaller aircraft to be suicide drones. Yes, A-22s/A-33s are used which cruise at like 100-120MPH or so (though there's been some talk of turboprop conversions of the same, too). But other small civilian aircraft which cruise at more like 160MPH have been employed, versus a late approach speed of the Embraer of 180-190MPH or so.
And remember, radars vary groundspeed, which can easily vary by +/- 25MPH from actual (and will be reading the Embraer's speed on the low side).
It's one of the reason Russia was very hesitant to shoot them down initially. Some of the planes were cessna and similar single engine prop planes that were loaded with explosives and remote controller:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/04/02/ukraine-pac...
They weren’t Cessnas. They were Aeroprakts.
My brother is flying to Japan tomorrow and we were talking about how the flight has gotten longer because of all the active war zones that they can't fly over any more.
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Is there anyone besides Russia who would have even been capable of shooting it down?
Yes, who shoots down entire civilian aircrafts?
Itavia 870 comes to mind: In the 80ies, a fighter jet was being smuggled to Gaddafi by hiding under a civilian aircraft, and the speculation is that France shot the convoy, killing 81. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itavia_Flight_870
It’s sadly somewhat common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...
Russia/USSR does seem overrepresented here.
Sure, but who's most likely to have shot down this plane over Russian territory?
The russians.
Well considering the incident happened in Kazakhstan, one might imagine Kazakhstan has air defences too...
The aircraft was sent away / prohibited from landing after reporting the explosion over Grozny, and had to divert to Kazakhstan to land without real pitch control.
Some view the denying of emergency landing clearance as an effort to destroy/obscure evidence: https://x.com/DailyTurkic/status/1872008574878298418
The pilots probably should have ignored that. There’s no such thing as “denying landing clearance” to an aircraft experiencing an emergency. There’s only “get out of the way of the incoming emergency.” But I can’t blame them for not wanting to take their chances when they were just shot by local air defense.
Do you really wanna push your luck with the people who just shot at you while also handing over all physical evidince to them?
There’s also “accidentally shoot another missile at the threat that wasn’t shot down last time” phenomenon
"Yah, ATC is saying to leave-- but instead let's say 'unable' and shoot an approach at same airport where we just got shot at."
The more obvious explanation would be that air controllers surmised that it was at risk of being shot at again if it continued attempting a landing in Grozny and the safest thing to do was to divert it out of Russia.
Regional air traffic control is in Rostov (on-Don) - you’d think they’d at least be able to get the military controllers at Rostov (Southern military district HQ) on the horn?
Assuming they have an established channel of communication, yes they would have, but imagine trying to communicate to them which blip on the radar screen is an actual civilian aircraft, and hoping they're able to track it and make sure they only fire on other targets.
The plane crashed in Kazakhstan. It was shot over Russia. It was still sufficiently airworthy to make quite a distance before crashing.
In particular some of the damage has a "linear" quality that could plausibly come from a continuous rod warhead, which would be typical for a system like Pantsir. If as the Russians claim, it was a bird-strike, you wouldn't expect debris from the failure of the engine to make a pattern like that on the tail, unless the entire engine body broke apart.
Likewise, it didn't look like it was on a glide path, but rather that as discussed the hydraulics failed and they has to use thrust vectoring to fly. Obviously for very fine correction on final approach that becomes difficult, and the result was what we saw. All of that is consistent with a missile.
Blancolirio goes into some depth on the hydraulic systems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J04wUKZUCI&pp=ygULYmxhbmNvb...
This is odd.
I'm from the area, near Grozny. If Grozny were under fog, there are at least 10 airports nearby (Makhachkala, Vladikavkaz, Nalchik, Minvody, Rostov, Krasnodar etc) in the North Caucasus. Why would you fly east, across the Caspian Sea, toward Kazakhstan?
Obviously just speculation but if one was just fired upon, yet still in one piece and at least somewhat in control, a pilot might decide braving a longer diversion over a body of water to get away from the area, might be the safest course of action.
Also if you have control issues and a forced depressurization it might be best to avoid obstructions (like the Caucasus mountains) and significant course adjustments.
But from what I'm seeing the actual answer is that they were denied landing clearance, which is a bit suspicious.
They reported a dual GPS failure.
My guess, they picked an airport they knew well, that they could probably navigate to with nothing more than a compass and landmarks. And if they suspected GPS jamming (personally, a dual GPS failure over Russia would be my first guess) they would be biased towards an airport far away from an active war zone.
I am curious why they didn't divert back to their departure airport at Baku. It's roughly the same distance and surely they knew that airport even better, and could just follow the coastline back. Maybe by the time they had the plane under control they were already much closer to Aktau.
If I was a pilot flying into an at-war country I’d want my alternate to point in a different direction, the exact opposite course of the war zone ideally. Which this pretty much is.
And, to further that point, multiple airports you listed here are currently closed because of that war.
Makhachkala has been taking international flights.
I just checked the transcript I've seen floating out there, the first alternate was Baku, i.e. their departure airport. Then Mineralnye Vody (which is some way to the west), then Makhachkala, then they seemed to go far to the east, so while I think the first option was Baku - matching what I said, the list of options pretty quickly became 'anywhere'. What a harrowing flight.
> The Grozny airport reportedly denied landing permission to the AZAL plane, and the aircraft was also refused permission to land at airports in Makhachkala and Mineralnye Vody.
says media in Azerbaijan now as per https://report.az/en/incident/crashed-azal-plane-shot-down-b...
There you go.
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Anyone else notice an influx of these new accounts in the last couple of years that start rapidly spamming inflammatory replies that seem to be trying to incite arguments (look at this ^ account's comments in the last hour)? HN is a bastion of mostly western, intelligent discourse. I'm really starting to wonder - is it under attack?
Has been for a while. Most articles critical of Russia end up getting flagged pretty quickly and also tend to get flooded with posts from accounts created 5 minutes prior.
I see this everywhere. IMHO that is because we've all found vice signaling is lower cost than expected
Vice signalizing? Intentionally displaying one's flaws/vices? I really don't think that's what this is. I think this is someone or a bot that is trying to get people to react with anger, in hopes that it catches on and causes wider arguments in the thread/social platform. It's very similar to what foreign influence/disinformation campaigns are doing in western societies, but targeted at online societies.
The entire region was the zone of active air defence and Vladikavkaz was surely not an option given the drone strike that damaged a shopping mall there. My only question here is why there were any civilian flights at the moment. They should have been diverted.
Any time something makes no sense from this region of the world, there’s often a ridiculous Soviet style decision behind it.
https://bsky.app/profile/dandrezner.bsky.social/post/3le7jr7...
Mountains
Grozny was not under fog.
russia is a terrorist state
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New DNI is basically the Kremlin spokeswoman.
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This is really boring, tiresome hyperbole
It might be "technically probably not true," but no it's not hyperbole. If anything it's an understatement. Actually what the incoming administration did is publicly asked adversarial foreign intelligence services to hack and disrupt the election campaign of an American political opponent.
And then those intelligence services actually did just that pretty much the same day.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asked-russia-to-...
Please explain, as this is not obvious at all.
They literally aren’t. And Russia being a boogeyman that both sides claim the other is in cahoots with is exhausting. And the premise that communicating with someone means you endorse their actions. It’s all just lazy
Thank god. I remember the outgoing administration bragging about the fact that they haven’t held talks with Putin since the start of the war.
Maybe now diplomacy can happen and thousands of lives can be saved.
Alright Neville, let’s get you to bed
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Are you writing this message from 2014 or 2024? Hard to tell.
I don’t believe I (or you) from a position of comfort have the answers. I believe that western democracies should trust their partners on the frontlines to decide when and how to find peace with an invader, as they know more than we do.
The Russian state TV: We will come back to Berlin and nuke everybody who gets in the way!
Some westeners: We never know, maybe they will stop if we give them a few more villages this time.
How close to war does one need to be for their opinion on this to be valid?
A Shaheed drone flew over my head just less than two months ago. Does that qualify?
In case it does — don’t be so naïve. Of course the russians want more. They’ve made that clear enough. Their heads of state have made that clear enough. Repeatedly. For years.
> Maybe now diplomacy can happen and thousands of lives can be saved.
Diplomacy, like the time Macron came to Russia to stop the war and Putin told him the war would never happen. This kind of diplomacy?
Usually, the war can not be stopped just by taking a flight to the side that's initiating it and telling them to stop. We need more than that.
Like creating economic interdependency through extremely generous energy deals? That kind of diplomacy?
There's been dozens and dozens (if not more) of diplomatic talks which Putin all sabotaged.
Putin lying that there would not be any wars was just one talk among others, probably the most memorable and iconic of the war.
What is Putin bringing to the table this time to guarantee that it won't end up like the other times?
We can only hope. Unfortunately there are some disturbing parallels to WWI - there is a sizeable contingent in the US who won't admit they made a mistake on this one. It'll be like the Germans all over again, a big well armed population who don't understand that they'll lose even more if they stir up a big conflict. Even if Trump manages to put a lid on the current conflict I'm not hopeful it'll be enough to pacify the warmongers even in the medium term. There is a lot of work to be done. It has been unreal to watch the US muck up European security so badly. They are now also in a really bad position vs. China, they've secured it a well resourced ally to the north for no reason at all.
It is no mystery how Trump outmanoeuvres these people, they have the strategic acumen of a stunned fish.
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Didn’t the US Navy just shoot one of its own down yesterday? Bleep happens.
Military incidents are very different. While all civilian planes carry transponders that identify them as such [1], military planes usually don't for obvious reasons, so they're much easier to misidentify as hostile.
[1]: https://www.flightradar24.com/
IFF is a transponder system that's significantly more advanced and reliable than civilian aeronautical transponders.
Aren't there systems like this instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe
The US Navy immediately announced what happened. Would you like to take bets on whether Russia fesses up to this one?
There are videos of the crashed tail section that show shrapnel damage.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1hm0ijm/another_a...
There are videos filmed from within the cabin by the passengers showing shrapnel piercing clothing, limbs, seats, and more before the plane crashes.
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1871952188383309872 (Holes in life vests)
https://www.reddit.com/r/world24x7hr/comments/1hm6prb/seats_... (Shrapnel damage)
https://www.reddit.com/r/TerrifyingAsFuck/comments/1hm4mf0/f... (Survivor before the plane crashes.)
(There are better videos, but I can't seem to find them again.)
There are reports that the plane was forced to divert course and fly over water after being hit. They were close to landing but were forced to reroute in the middle of their emergency.
More videos:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TerrifyingAsFuck/comments/1hlx7tc/c... (Crash. Other videos from other angles exist elsewhere online.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/world24x7hr/comments/1hm2ynv/shocki... (Tail section after crash)
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/1hlxm7i/surviv... (Survivors exiting the tail section)
https://www.reddit.com/r/world24x7hr/comments/1hm7poq/miracl... (Survivor who filmed prior to the crash.)
I'll edit my comment with sources shortly.
This whole thing feels more and more like a terrible nightmarish mash-up between MH17 and UA232. Every indication so far is that the flight crew here are absolute heroes for bringing down the plane as well as they did and it's likely that they should be remembered as heroically saving these lives, even if not their own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
Checking out the video, it's amazing anyone survived that one. The construction of the planes is really impressive.
It's actually not terribly uncommon for crashes like this to be survivable, it just comes down to how shallow the decline ends up being and whether part of the fuselage snaps off and can get away from the burning fuel.
It's an Embraer E190: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_family
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A turbine blade or a few coming off can have the same effect as a bomb going off near the plane.
The pieces would tear through the plane like shrapnel from a weapon.
Military anti air missiles tend to use continuous rods to slice planes in half instead of fragmentation warheads that leave small holes. The aim is to sever control lines, not merely to puncture.
Turbine blades puncturing the tail section? I'm not convinced.
https://a.dropoverapp.com/cloud/download/8a578eea-0de8-4504-...
Unconfined engine failures do the fuselage damage in the proximity of the engine: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187775032...
Several anti-aircraft systems can and do use fragmentation warheads. The BUK that shot down MH17 used one and the impact patterns are strikingly similar. Take a look at the “Reconstruction” section in this: https://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/ntsb/miscell...
The Russian Buk, S-300 and S-400 largely use missiles with blast fragmentation.
For example, see the SAMS section here: https://www.gichd.org/fileadmin/uploads/gichd/Publications/G...
They did in the past but they are designed now to disintegrate without taking the rest of the plane with them. Not that something unusual couldn't happen, but the engines are tested on this very thoroughly, based on previous accidents. Even when it has gone wrong in recent times it hasn't been catastrophic.
Both engines were running at the time of impact as apparently the plane was being maneuvered via differential thrust.
> A turbine blade or a few coming off can have the same effect as a bomb going off near the plane.
Not in any passenger jet Embraer would get caught dead making. To my knowledge, most jet engines that are parallel to passenger sections require cowling that is reinforced to withstand a blade going loose.
Here's another incident you can compare against:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1hm0nf7/an_il22_t...
In a weird coincidence, this morning I watched an old video about the Iranian airliner downed by a US missile in the Persian gulf. These accidents are just horrible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
Hard to call 655 an accident. The missiles were deliberately fired at that aircraft.
It was either murder or manslaughter by negligence.
The same is true for this incident.
> There is a possibility that the Azerbaijani passenger plane flying from Baku to Grozny was shot down by Russian air defense.
> At least, the holes in the tail section look like traces of the striking elements of an anti-aircraft missile.
> Surviving passenger of the plane Subhonkul Rakhimov said that the pilots tried to land the plane in Grozny three times: "The third time, something exploded. There was an explosion - I seemed to me that it was not inside the plane."
Don't worry. I'm sure we'll do nothing about it. Again.
Why should “we” have anything to do with a flight between Azerbaijan and Russia that crashed in Kazakhstan?
Isn’t there a saying about triumph of evil and good people doing nothing?
Ok, well you’ll have to help me out with your good vs. evil decoder ring because all three of those countries are allies with each other so I’m still not clear who we’re supposed to be white knighting for here.
What are the options? The war in Ukraine is a land war of attrition. They need more soldiers. Many Ukraninians evade military service and are instead refugees in the EU.
Sending NATO troops to do their work seems strange, especially considering that we are talking about a relatively small piece of land in Eastern Ukraine. And no, Putin will not go for Lisboa if he still does not manage to occupy the whole of Donetsk.
Do you blame NATO for not recapturing North Korea?
They need equipment too, lots of it. The west for example sent only token amount of tanks. It's slightly better in some categories like towed artillery but not nearly enough. People who disagree simply don't understand the scale of this war.
Night vision would be huge. If you've ever seen videos of soldiers with night vision engaging those without, it's slaughter. And that's exactly what we need, kill ratios of tens to one to make Russia really pay for their aggression.
If they wanna send flesh against steel, make them bleed out. And when they start conscripting in big cities, maybe those "poor" "innocent" Russians will finally do something about their government.
>And when they start conscripting in big cities, maybe those "poor" "innocent" Russians will finally do something about their government.
no guns. and that's why your benevolent overlords want to take your guns away too.
I see these snarky reddity comments all the time, and you people seriously fail to grasp the difference between authoritarian shitholes like Russia and China and your glorious liberal democracies, where your cities burn while cops stand around doing nothing because the local government is terrified of bad optics. in Russia, civil unrest gets put down with extreme prejudice.
a regime like that can only fail when even its eunuch servants and attack dogs aren't getting paid and fed. otherwise, your imaginary revolutionaries with sticks, stones and molotovs will get mowed down en masse, the survivors will get 15 years in gulag, and all without a peep from the local media.
Why the obsession with military response? In my view, there is a lot of ground between “do nothing” and “put NATO boots on the ground”. Including a ton of asymmetric / deniable actions.
False dichotomies like this are very questionable.
Anything to let them get away with it again.
Team america, world police?
Or Team America, child-minder?
Of course you won't because you can't. Keep sending Ukraine money and materials, so they'll keep cosplaying 9/11 as long as they can, sending aeroprakt planes full of explosives into Russian highrise buildings. And as long as it happens, accidents with AA missiles gonna happen also. So, you guys are getting exactly what you're paying for.
I've never seen such a clear plane crash, shocking
> " ... as the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft was approaching to land as scheduled."
Not as scheduled. The aircraft was diverted because of unacceptable weather at its primary destination -- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwl1e6895qo : "The plane was en route to Grozny in Russia but it was diverted due to fog, the airline told the BBC."
Just saying, not excusing a hostile takedown, if that's what happened.
Diversion due to weather is a possibility anticipated by pilots, who normally carry extra fuel to accommodate the possibility of a diversion.
Ironically, because of the advent of drone attacks, a small aircraft like the Embraer 190 is more likely to be mistaken for hostile, compared to a full-size airliner.
The 190 is a small airliner, but definitely not a small aircraft.
If I plot a line between Azerbaijan and Grozny, even if I go around the Caucasus over the Caspian, crashing in Kazakhstan seems way, way off.
It diverted to Aktau after getting hit (by birds allegedly, but really - SAM). All other flights got diverted to Aktau too on that day.
Why that far? It's at least twice further from either beginning or destination than those are apart themselves.
If the pilots were aware that they had been hit by anti-aircraft defenses, and that they were in at least partial control of the aircraft, they might have concluded they were better off getting as far away as possible, just in case the AA operators try again.
Seems like the plane was barely controllable. That may have just been the direction they were able to maintain.
If it got hit over Makhachkala it’s closer to Aktau - just over the Caspian. Maybe it’s easier to land there with busted controls too
There are reports of GPS jamming in the area (presumably as part of the Ukraine war). It seems plausible the pilots got lost.
Also, the time between the 'bird strike' and the crash is 20+ minutes, so they might have been trying to fly towards an airport with a larger runway or better emergency crews. Or maybe just an airport where repair crew were stationed to fix whatever was wrong with the plane.
Doubtful. The Caspian Sea is a pretty unmistakeable landmark, even from high altitude, which the pilots would have seen.
I think it was more likely that that happened to be the direction the plane was pointing when it got hit by the missile and lost control surfaces, so that is where the pilots went.
Russia: "Why does the world view us as either malicious or incompetent?"
Also Russia: Consistently fails to shoot down military aircraft and missiles, consistently shoots down passenger jets, consistently lies about both
Not a great couple of decades for civilian air travel near Russian airspace, that's for sure.
It’s not ‘either or’, it’s ‘and’.
I'm not saying they are not both, but there is definitely another reason lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itavia_Flight_870
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 would surely be a bit more on the nose.
Especially since rt.com's only above-the-fold mention is "Russia-bound airliner crashes in ex-_Soviet_ state (VIDEO)". Nope, they don't need to use the word 'Kazakhstan', the 50% longer, much less descriptive but much more telling 'ex-Soviet state' is the one they're chosen.
There's a second mention above the fold on rt.com now.
"Putin extends condolences over plane crash in ex-Soviet state".
They're literally a parody of themselves. Like, what's the implication here: Shame about the accident, none of this would have happened if we were all still together in a single nation led by us?
That one is completely unrelated to Russia, but sparked a lot of theories nonetheless due to the number of strange deaths hitting people among those who were somehow related to the activities in the Mediterranean sea that night. That includes unclear strange suicides among military personnel and two of the three pilots colliding at the Ramstein airbase disaster in 1988.
https://www-giannibarbacetto-it.translate.goog/2023/09/03/st...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
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Is that you Alex Jones?
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The "orcs" being who?
> Orc (Cyrillic: орк, romanised: ork), plural orcs (Russian and Ukrainian: орки), is a pejorative commonly used by many Ukrainians to refer to a Russian soldier participating in the Russian-Ukrainian War and Russian citizens who support the aggression of Russia against Ukraine.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_(slang)
Let's call a spade a spade. "Orc" is a dehumanizing term that the Ukrainian military propaganda invented and popularized to make it psychologically easier for their soldiers to shoot at Russians. Because they are not dropping a grenade from a drone on a human, they are just dropping a grenade on an orc, on a monster from a video game.
For Americans in the audience, "Orc" belongs to the same category as "Jap", "Gook", "Sandn**r", and all similar dehumanizing terms that American soldiers have used to make it psychologically easier to shoot and bomb their enemies.
Orc isn’t racial though. And anyway it’s ok to dehumanize people who are behaving monstrously.
No. No, it's not.
Dehumanizing others costs you part of your humanity. It puts you on the path toward becoming a monster. Yeah, it's only one step on that path, but the better answer is, don't start down that path.
Some people behave like monsters. You may have to kill them. But they're still people, and you still have to not dehumanize them, lest you dehumanize yourself.
It’s ok to kill them, but calling them names is too far?
Killing them is required for self-defense. What's the point of dehumanizing them? Boosting soldier morale? Would it be okay to call Japanese and Germans slurs in WW2 for the same reason? Do the ends justify the means?
The racial slurs are a slightly different kettle of fish. But I’ll shed no tears for the Nazis who were called mean names.
>The racial slurs are a slightly different kettle of fish.
So "racial slurs" are fine but country slurs are fine? What's the basis of that?
>But I’ll shed no tears for the Nazis who were called mean names.
Not every Russian is a "Nazi", especially when there's mandatory conscription there and there's little room for political dissent.
Dehumanizing them is not the same as "calling them names". It's denying that they are human.
And yes, it's too far.
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For those who need actual moments from history to understand this, here's some reading material:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mutilation_of_Japanes...
In particular:
>We learned about savagery from the Japanese ... But those sixteen-to-nineteen-year old kids we had on the Canal were fast learners ... At daybreak, a couple of our kids, bearded, dirty, skinny from hunger, slightly wounded by bayonets, clothes worn and torn, wack off three Jap heads and jam them on poles facing the "Jap side" of the river ... The colonel sees Jap heads on the poles and says, "Jesus men, what are you doing? You're acting like animals." A dirty, stinking young kid says, "That's right Colonel, we are animals. We live like animals, we eat and are treated like animals—what the fuck do you expect?"
I’ve seen videos of russian soldiers invading Ukraine, killing soldiers and civilians, taking prisoners, and sometimes beheading or castrating prisoners while they’re still alive.
Where is the human part of taking a knife to a man’s genitalia after you decide to invade his country?
If russians don’t want to die, they can just go home.
If you peer down into the abyss, the abyss will look back up at you.
Calling russian soldiers “Orcs” when they invade, rape, kill, and torture, is a degree of moral decay I’m willing to accept.
Russian soldiers.
Orcas. Nothing hath fury like an ill-tempered whale.
I’m pretty sure it’s is a shortened form of Horcasitas, from Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo, the Viceroy of New Spain who sent an exploration expedition under Francisco de Eliza to the Pacific Northwest in 1791.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Vicente_de_G%C3%BCemes,_2...
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I'm not sure if i'm reading this correctly or not, but the telegraph seems to report that the oxygen tank exploded? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/25/azerbaijan...
I can't read through the paywall, but the numerous pictures of the skin with the metal folded in are a pretty dead giveaway that there was an explosion nearby that crippled the aircraft
Here is another one, but, looks like RT is ultimately the source for both the articles so... hmmmm...right...
https://www.news18.com/world/oxygen-tank-inside-azerbaijan-a...
(news18 is CNN in India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN-News18)
Why not consider deleting the disinformation you chose to share?