Home › World › Azerbaijan Airlines halts flights to seven Russian cities
Azerbaijan Airlines halts flights to seven Russian cities
Summary
A look back at the airline's suspension after the Flight 8243 crash, and a Finnish detention over a damaged Baltic cable.
What did Azerbaijan Airlines do after one of its aircraft came down in Kazakhstan? On 27 December 2024, the carrier suspended flights to seven cities in Russia, two days after the crash of Flight 8243, amid allegations that the plane had been hit by a Russian surface-to-air missile.
The day before, on 26 December 2024, Azerbaijani government officials told Reuters that a missile launched from a Pantsir-S system was responsible for the crash, which killed 38 people. The officials also said the aircraft's GPS navigation system had been jammed during the flight.
The flight had been travelling from Baku to Grozny. Later accounts established that the Embraer E190 was severely damaged on approach to Grozny. The pilots tried to divert, but the hydraulic system failed and the aircraft lost control, crashing near Aktau in Kazakhstan. There were 62 passengers and 5 crew on board; 29 people survived with injuries, and the dead included both pilots and a flight attendant.
A separate incident in the Baltic
On 26 December 2024, Finnish border guards and police also detained a Russian vessel suspected of damaging the Estlink-2 submarine power cable the previous day. The detention came after a series of Baltic Sea cable disruptions that autumn. In November 2024, two telecommunication cables had been disrupted, prompting accusations of hybrid warfare and sabotage from European government officials and NATO member states.
