A strange banging sound, chaos and prayers before plane crashed

Tbilisi, Georgia: At first, there was a strange banging noise outside the plane as it approached Grozny, Russia. Then, while one flight attendant was standing in the cabin, something hit his arm, cutting it. The passengers, sensing something was terribly wrong, began panicking. Some began praying.

One passenger recalled thinking it would be the last prayer of his life. Then, silence.

The crash landing of the Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 on the ground near the airport of Aktau, Kazakhstan.Credit: AP

The anxious and chaotic scene on board Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was described by two flight attendants – Zulfugar Asadov and Aydan Rahimli – and a passenger, Subhonkul Rakhimov, in interviews with The New York Times on Friday and with an Azerbaijani TV station.

They were among the 29 survivors from the plane that set off on Wednesday with 67 people on board from Baku, Azerbaijan, en route to Grozny, Russia, and that crashed in a ball of black smoke and orange flames on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. The pilot was among those who did not survive.

Officials from three countries have opened investigations into the cause of the crash.

From his hospital bed in Baku, recalling the terror of the flight, Asadov said in a phone interview, “Thank God I’m alive.”

A group of surviving passengers of the crashed Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Aktau, Kazakhstan.Credit: AP

He and other survivors said the plane ran into trouble near Grozny. The aircraft, an Embraer 190, had made three attempts to land in the city, in Russia’s Chechnya republic, according to Asadov. And then it began acting weirdly.

Data received from the plane showed that its vertical speed oscillated more than 100 times during the final 74 minutes of flight, according to Flightradar24.

After he heard the peculiar sound outside the plane’s fuselage and his arm was cut – by what he does not know – Asadov said he took a towel and bandaged it tightly.

Rahimli helped Asadov treat his arm, he said. She told Xezer Xeber Azerbaijani television network that she had heard two bangs outside the airplane and that fragments had penetrated the cabin.

On Friday, Azerbaijan Airlines said the preliminary results of the Azerbaijani investigation showed the plane had suffered “physical and technical external interference”.

People carry the coffin of 26-year-old Ramazan Filiev in Sharif village, 350km north-west of Baku, Azerbaijan. Filiev was among the 38 people who died in the crash.Credit: AP

While US intelligence agencies do not have definitive information yet, US officials have said there are preliminary indications that the plane was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft system, mostly likely a surface-to-air missile.

Shocked by the impact on the plane, some passengers stood up in panic, the witnesses said.

People lay flowers at the Consulate of Azerbaijan in St. Petersburg, Russia honouring victims of the crash sources have blamed on Russian air defences.Credit: AP

Rakhimov, the passenger, said in a Reuters interview from a hospital in Baku that he, too, had heard a bang. After he saw the plane’s fuselage was damaged, he said, he expected the aircraft to collapse. He began to pray.

“I thought that was my last prayer,” Rakhimov said.

Miraculously, the plane continued flying.

Rahimli and Asadov were sitting in the back, they said, talking to other flight attendants over the phone. Then, the plane crashed.

Rakhimov, describing the crash, said he was hit and his body twisted over and over again. Suddenly, there was silence, he said, until people around him began to moan, presumably in pain from their injuries.

“I realised that we have landed,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do – whether to laugh or cry.”

On Friday, Azerbaijan Airlines said it had suspended regular flights to eight Russian cities. It has stopped flights to Makhachkala in neighbouring Dagestan as well.

Reuters also reported UAE airline flydubai has suspended flights from Dubai to the southern Russian airports of Sochi and Mineralnie Vody.

In Azerbaijan, investigators have said believe a Russian Pantsir-S1 air-defence system damaged the plane, according to two people in Baku who were briefed on the inquiry and spoke anonymously because the investigation was ongoing. In a statement, Rosaviatsia, the Russian aviation agency, said it had offered full cooperation to the investigation.

Asadov’s daughter Konul said in a phone interview that she had learnt of the tragedy when her husband called her and told her to come home from work.

“He told me, ‘Don’t worry, your father is alive, but the plane he was on crashed’,” she said.

She started watching videos of the crash on the internet and couldn’t believe that anyone could have survived. She said was able to talk to her father only the day after the disaster.

“When I heard his voice,” she said, “I thought I was being deceived, that he couldn’t have survived something like that, that someone was faking his voice to comfort me.”

She said she and her family never got used to her father’s job. “I call him every time before the flight if the weather is bad, and after the flight I call my mum and ask if she talked to him,” she said.

On the day the plane crashed, she said, she did not call her father because the weather was good in Baku, and she did not think about the fact that the climate could be bad where he was flying.

After the crash, Rakhimov said he was lucky: He had been sitting in the back of the plane. The aircraft’s front end had received most of the impact, but the tail end had been sheared off, videos and images from the crash show.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.