It has been revealed what the pilot of the doomed Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft said in his eerie final words before the plane crashed.
The aircraft went down on Wednesday, December 25 and there was mounting evidence today that the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane crashed killing 38 people after being struck by Russian air defenses.
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The Embraer jet was probably mistakenly targeted by a Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile fired from the Naursky district of Chechnya as a suspected Ukrainian drone.
Such a strike is consistent with the apparent shrapnel damage to the aircraft which was observed on the intact rear section of the doomed aircraft at Aktau Kazakhstan.
The testimonies of passengers who survived and reported an explosion outside the aircraft are also consistent with this.
The crew mistook a collision with a flock of birds for a catastrophic event according to a partial text release of the alleged communications between the pilots and air traffic control.
At 8:12 a.m., the crew reported “both GPS lost” on the Embraer E190AR, and sought help with “vectoring” to head back to the take-off airport Baku, evidently after the sudden closure of Grozny airport.
At 8:16, one of the pilots said: “We have control failure, bird strike in the cockpit. Bird strike in the cockpit (inaudible)…”
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Ground control replied: “AXY8243 I understand you, what kind of help do you need?”
The captain indicated he was seeking to return to his home airport Baku. But at 8:17, the pilot announced he was “heading to Mineralnye Vody” – an airport in southern Russia.
Ground control tells him to “perform left orbit” – but the flight deck replies: “I can’t execute, control is lost.” At 8:19, one of the pilots states: “I can’t maintain 150, we have high pressure in the cabin.”
Ground control reply: “AXY8243 understood you.”
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One minute later, at 8:20, the flight’s scheduled arrival time, the pilot says: “Left 360, my plane is losing control.”
At 8:21, according to the leaked transcript, the crew decided instead to make for Makhachkala, a Russian airport on the Caspian Sea.
At 8:22, the crew reported: “Now the hydraulics have failed.”
Two minutes later, the pilot appears to deny he has declared a “distress” on board and tells ground control: “The board [plane] is in order.” But the air traffic controller then cannot properly hear the crew.
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“You are very hard to hear…. tell me your altitude.” The plane later disappeared from radar for 37 minutes before reappearing as it sought to land in Aktau.
