25th December, 2025
The jet, carrying 62 passengers and five crew members, went down near the city of Aktau.
“This is a tragic situation; 38 people died,” stated Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev, as reported by the local news outlet Orda.
Kazakhstan’s Emergency Situations Ministry reported that at least 29 people, including two children, survived the crash of a passenger plane near the city of Aktau and were hospitalized with various injuries. The ministry released photographs from the crash site showing firefighters searching through the debris. One image appeared to show the tail section of the plane largely intact but detached from the fuselage. An unverified video shared by RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency, showed injured passengers being pulled from the wreckage. Some passengers were seen lying on the ground while others managed to walk away from the crash site.
According to Russia’s state aviation authority, the Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer-190 plane attempted an emergency landing in Aktau after colliding with a flock of birds. The airline stated that the plane came down approximately 1.8 miles from the Aktau airport.
Kazakhstan’s Emergency Situations Ministry launched an investigation into the cause of the crash. Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General’s Office also opened a criminal investigation and dispatched investigators to the site. Similar inquiries were initiated in Russia and Kazakhstan.
The Embraer-190 was en route from Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, to Grozny in Russia’s Chechnya republic. The plane had been diverted to Kazakhstan due to heavy fog in Grozny, according to RIA Novosti. Azerbaijan Airlines subsequently suspended flights from Baku to Grozny and Makhachkala in Dagestan until the investigation concludes.
Earlier reports from Flightradar24, a flight tracking service, suggested that the plane had encountered “GPS jamming and spoofing” near Grozny, potentially complicating navigation. However, aviation journalist Andrei Menshenin noted that while such interference could make piloting challenging, it was unlikely to have directly caused the crash.
On the same day, local Chechen news outlets reported drone strikes in the region, though these reports could not be independently verified. Chechnya has recently experienced a rise in Ukrainian drone attacks, targeting various sites, including a riot police battalion.
Kazakhstan’s transportation ministry confirmed that the passengers included 37 Azerbaijani nationals, 16 Russians, six Kazakh citizens, and three Kyrgyz nationals. Russian President Vladimir Putin extended condolences to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who declared a national day of mourning for the victims. Aliyev had been traveling to St. Petersburg, Russia, but returned to Azerbaijan following news of the crash.
Azerbaijan Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, has a history dating back to the Soviet era when it operated as a regional branch of Aeroflot. The airline transitioned to modern Western aircraft over the years. Its last major accident occurred in 2005 when an An-140 plane crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 18 passengers and five crew members. That crash was later attributed to instrument failure.