By Nailia Bagirova
BAKU (Reuters) – Azerbaijan on Sunday paid tribute to the pilots and passengers of the Azerbaijan Airways passenger airplane that crashed in Kazakhstan killing 38 folks after Russian air defences have been used in opposition to Ukrainian drones.
Flight J2-8243 crashed on Wednesday in a ball of fireside close to the town of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from southern Russia the place Ukrainian drones have been attacking a number of cities.
Captain Igor Kshnyakin and co-pilot Alexander Kalyaninov, each ethnic Russians with Azerbaijan citizenship, and Hokuma Aliyeva, a flight attendant, got full honours at a ceremony on the Alley of Honour in central Baku attended by President Ilham Aliyev and his spouse, Mehriban.
The pilots have been lauded in Azerbaijan for touchdown in a manner which allowed 29 folks to outlive however led to their very own deaths.
Azerbaijan’s presidential workplace stated that after the yet-to-be defined incident over Russian airspace, the pilots battled to manage the airplane – desperately looking for a touchdown spot.
With holes within the fuselage, some crew injured, passengers praying for his or her lives in a de-pressurised cabin and the airplane spiralling uncontrolled, the pilots flew throughout the Caspian Sea in the direction of their demise in an crash touchdown.
“Solely by way of the braveness and professionalism of the pilots was an emergency touchdown efficiently carried out,” Azerbaijan’s presidential workplace stated.
The Alley of Honour is Azerbaijan’s most sacred fashionable burial floor – the place outstanding politicians, poets and scientists are laid to relaxation, together with Heydar Aliyev, the late father of the present president.
Captain Kshnyakin’s daughter, Anastasia Kshnyakina, stated her father was a devoted pilot who took his duties to his passengers extraordinarily significantly.
“My father all the time stated: after I take off, I’m accountable not just for my life, but additionally for the lives of all passengers and crew members,” Kshnyakina stated.
“Together with his final flight, he proved what a real hero needs to be.”
Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologised to Azerbaijan’s president for a “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving the airplane which Baku stated crashed after some form of exterior interference.
4 sources with data of the preliminary findings of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the catastrophe informed Reuters on Thursday that Russian air defences had mistakenly shot it down.
The extraordinarily uncommon publicised apology from Putin was the closest Moscow has come to accepting some blame for Wednesday’s catastrophe, though the Kremlin assertion didn’t say Russia had shot down the airplane, solely noting {that a} legal case had been opened.
The Embraer passenger jet had flown from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, in Russia’s southern Chechnya area, earlier than veering off tons of of miles throughout the Caspian Sea.
