Azerbaijan Airways Crash Survivor Recollects Second Realized He Was Alive

Survivors from the Azerbaijan Airways flight that went down in Kazakhstan, a rustic in central Asia, are talking out for the primary time for the reason that Christmas Day tragedy.

In a brand new interview with the New York Occasions printed Friday, Dec. 27, two flight attendants — Zulfugar Asadov and Aydan Rahimli — and passenger Subhonkul Rakhimov spoke with the outlet following the lethal Dec. 25 crash. 

Azerbaijan Airways Flight 8243 had been en path to Grozny, Russia, from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku with 67 folks on board when it went down. Twenty-nine people survived.

“Thank God I’m alive,” Asadov instructed the Occasions in a telephone interview from his hospital mattress in Baku. 

“I believed that was my final prayer,” Rakhimov stated, recalling how he started to hope after listening to a loud noise and observing injury to the airplane’s fuselage.

Rakhimov, whose seat was behind the plane, continued describing the chaotic occasion, saying his physique was hit. He additionally talked about a number of twisting earlier than listening to nothing however others moaning. “I spotted that we’ve landed,” he stated. “I didn’t know what to do — whether or not to chortle or cry.”

By the point Rahimli wakened, she had already been transported from the wreckage: “I opened my eyes and noticed staff. I requested the place I used to be, they usually stated that we had been in Aktau.”

Flight attendant Asadov’s daughter, Konul, shared how she discovered her father had survived a deadly aircraft crash. 

“He instructed me, ‘Don’t fear, your father is alive, however the aircraft he was on crashed,’ ” she stated of receiving a telephone name from her husband urging her to return house from work.

Konul had seen movies of the crash on-line, and was shocked that her father survived. 

“After I heard his voice,” she stated, “I believed I used to be being deceived, that he couldn’t have survived one thing like that, that somebody was faking his voice to consolation me.”

She added that she often checks in together with her father earlier than every flight, however as a result of the climate was clear for his route that day, she didn’t. 

“I name him each time earlier than the flight if the climate is dangerous, and after the flight I name my mother and ask if she talked to him,” Asadov’s daughter stated.

In accordance with the Occasions, a passenger recalled listening to a loud bang, then seeing flight attendant Asadov get hit within the arm with an object that pierced his pores and skin, although it was unclear what the article was or the place it got here from.

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Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russian officers have launched an investigation into the crash, nonetheless Azerbaijan Airways stated the preliminary outcomes confirmed the aircraft had suffered “bodily and technical exterior interference.”

In an announcement from the airways translated by the Occasions, the corporate stated Friday common flights to eight Russian cities had been suspended. Flights to Makhachkala in neighboring Dagestan had been additionally grounded.