The pilots of the Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) plane that crashed in Kazakhstan's Aktau on Wednesday tried their best to keep the aircraft airborne before they ran out of options, according to reports.
The pilots, after the plane collided with birds, decided to divert the flight to an alternate airfield in Aktau.
Russian Aviation industry sources told Russian media RIA Novosti that they viewed the video footage and radar data of the aircraft's movements. "It turned out that the pilots tried to keep the plane in the sky for a long time. They tried to avoid a crash until the very end. There is information that the captain even tried to land the plane on a vacant lot, where there was a flat surface, near the Aktau airport," he said.
Data from FlightRadar24 also showed the plane flying over the republic of Dagestan along the Caspian Sea coast before it disappeared from tracking. The plane reappears an hour later off course, flying low above the water near western Kazakhstan before crashing. However, it is not clear why its altitude went up dramatically before coming down in the minutes before it smashed into the ground.
The plane was headed from Azerbaijan's Baku to Russia's Grozny. As per the data from the Kazakh Transport Ministry, 62 passengers and five crew members were on board the plane, of which over 32 were rescued.
Authorities in Kazakhstan said a government commission had been set up to probe the accident. The panel members will soon fly to the site and ensure that the families of the dead and injured are getting the help they needed.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who was in Russia for a short visit, rushed back to cut short his visit to Russia due to the plane crash and took the situation under personal control.