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Azerbaijan Airlines halts Russia flights after crash
Summary
A look back at 27 December 2024, when the carrier suspended services to seven Russian cities as allegations over a missile strike mounted.
What did the airline do once claims emerged that a Russian missile had brought down one of its aircraft? On 27 December 2024, Azerbaijan Airlines suspended flights to seven cities in Russia, following the crash of Flight 8243 two days earlier, on Wednesday 25 December, amid allegations that the plane had been hit by a Russian surface-to-air missile.
What had happened
Flight 8243 was a scheduled service from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Grozny, Russia. The Embraer E190 operating it was badly damaged on approach to Grozny. The pilots tried to divert, but the hydraulic system failed, and the aircraft crashed near Aktau in Kazakhstan. Sixty-two passengers and five crew were on board. Thirty-eight of the 67 people died, including both pilots and a flight attendant, while 29 survived with injuries. (The account of the missile damage and the details of the diversion come from later descriptions of the event.)
The allegations
On 26 December 2024, Azerbaijani government officials told Reuters that a Russian military surface-to-air missile, launched from a Pantsir-S system, was responsible for the crash that killed 38 people. The officials also said the aircraft's GPS navigation system had been jammed during the flight.
The suspension announced on 27 December 2024 came one day after those claims were reported. It covered seven Russian cities, and it showed the airline treating the crash as a reason to pause part of its Russian network.
A separate incident in the Baltic
The same period brought another matter involving Russia. On 26 December 2024, Finnish border guards and police detained a Russian vessel suspected of damaging the Estlink-2 submarine power cable the previous day. The case belonged to a series of 2024 Baltic Sea cable disruptions. Earlier that year, on 17–18 November, two telecommunication cables, BCS East-West Interlink and C-Lion1, had been disrupted near each other, prompting accusations from European government officials and NATO member states of hybrid warfare and sabotage. Later accounts said that damage had not been conclusively attributed to any specific party.
Where things stood on 27 December 2024
By the end of that day, the airline had suspended flights to seven Russian cities, Azerbaijani officials had named a Pantsir-S missile as the cause of the crash and pointed to GPS jamming, and Finnish authorities were holding a Russian vessel over the Estlink-2 cable.
