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https://turan.az/en/politics/three-explosions-occurred-near-...

   Asadov Zulfuqar, a flight attendant who survived the crash of the Embraer plane on December 25 belonging to AZAL airline, shared what happened with the aircraft. Currently in the hospital, Asadov told journalists that the plane made two approaches to Grozny airport but was unable to land.

   "On the third approach, we felt an external impact on the plane. Passengers panicked, and we started calming them down. Immediately after that, we felt a second impact, and I felt pain in my forearm. It was a fragment that seriously wounded me, and I began to lose blood. After that, there was another explosion that both we and the passengers felt," he said.

   The flight attendant said that the captain decided to fly to another airport, but the nearest cities did not accept the plane, and it had to fly to Aktau. 
   "Initially, the captain planned to land the plane on water, but then decided to land on land, and it was clear that it would be a hard landing."

   [...] 

   These testimonies from the living witness finally confirm that the plane was shot at, and the holes in its fuselage are the result of three rocket impacts.
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2TpF0nlPEw

That doesn't make this any less strange. For one thing _three_ Pantsir hits would definitely have downed the plane. If the plane was not shot at during the first two approaches, why would it be shot at during the third? It would be visible on the radar the entire time, well in advance, since before landing it flies much higher than the drones, and does not try to evade radar detection. Additionally, since it was approaching to land, it was most definitely in constant communication with Grozny ATC and they knew about it. This could also be similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 someone posted below, except the engine would be under the wing rather than in the tail. Another possibility is a drone was shot down in close proximity and they were hit with residual shrapnel from that. That does seem unlikely, but not more so than a passenger plane withstanding three consecutive AD hits and then flying for over an hour.

By people comments it seems that rockets loaded with fragmentation warheads leave the same traces that can be seen in the photos of the tail of the plane, high velocity impacts, a damage very similar to what happened with MH17 flight as someone commented below.

The problem with the approaches probably was due the GPS was suffering spoofing[1], so the same way the avionics was receiving wrong data, can be guessed everyone was receiving wrong data, their "mistake" attack could have come from there, in addition, they did not close the air space to the civil planes, for unknown reasons. They will never admit exactly how they screwed it up, using what happened with MH17 as reference.

But an important matter here also is, even by diverting the plane with a declared emergency to cross the Caspian Sea, the pilots managed to arrive to the coast[3], and the GPS jamming across TWO-THIRDS of the Caspian Sea[2][1] what would have prevented finding survivors and fuselage evidences, had no effect. Now it can be investigated.

[1] https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/azerbaijan-airlines-e190-...

[2] https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/4k-az65#3879c26d

[3] Fighting to control and keep the plane flying, as the 3D image in the flightradar24 article[1] shows, rendered from the ADS-B data at moment the GPS jamming stopped. One can see at first glance how hard it was for them to cross the sea. The investigations and the black box will tell better what happened before.

The damage on the fuselage seems very similar to MH17.

My understanding is that these kind of missiles explode near the aircraft, sending hundreds of small metal balls in all directions which eventually hit critical parts of the aircraft.

Also, considering how quickly Russians tried to say it wasn't them is generally a good indicator of them being involved.

The IL-2 that was hit by a Ukrainian SAM system & managed to land afterwards had a very similar damage pattern to this aircraft. You absolutely can fly for hours after an AD hit, if you get lucky.

A proximity fused AD missile with a fragmentation charge will explode to the rear of a large airliner if it’s tail-chasing, resulting in exactly the kind of damage we see in both that IL-2 and this case.

I guess we'll see in a few weeks. Kazakhstan is not Russia, and as far as I can tell access to the site of the crash is being given to the involved parties, including Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan says the cause was "external technical influence", whatever that means. And in any case, there are plenty of survivors, and, therefore, direct witnesses.

> Azerbaijan says the cause was "external technical influence", whatever that means.

It is a glaringly obvious euphemism for a military mishap. I respect your hunger for details before arriving at a conclusion, but there was practically no chance this wasn't a missile strike. If you're familiar with Russia's reluctance to admit failure, this should come as a particularly disappointing inevitability.

- Azerbaijan is de-facto reliant on Russia for military support. They would always wait for Russia's admission before declaring an international incident that could threaten their standing. The initial denial and defense is likely protocol for Russian allies.

- Russia's official excuse of a "bird strike" didn't make sense, since there was spall marks on the fuselage that do not originate from turbine failure. Not only does the wreckage make this obvious, but I don't think hydraulics would fail from an isolated bird strike either.

- The ADS-B data absolutely corroborates a military attack. You can very clearly see a controlled ascent to altitude cut off by a jammed transponder, then again the transponder comes online with an unstable flight path. If one engine was disabled by a bird strike, the plane should still be able to trim itself into stable flight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijan_Airlines_Flight_824...

- Historically, starting in the USSR and continued by the Russian Federation, there has been a tradition of coverups defending military personnel when they make mistakes. It is unbelievably common both in history and in modern news cycles to hear about fabricated coverups that defend Russia's soldiers from criticism and, more importantly, distance Russia from any relations to the harm they've caused.

To be frank, it was foolish to hold out hope that Russia wasn't responsible from the moment they denied it so vehemently. Some nations cry wolf so often that other countries don't even take the time of day from them. If Russia waited to deliver a truthful response or launched an investigation to correct the source of the error, then there would be a lot less scrutiny and eyerolling from the international community right now. The desperate scramble to cover up an accident of this magnitude is an utter embarrassment for Russia, especially considering how few people were willing to trust the official (and obviously incomplete) Azerbaijan/Russian response. It is disrespectful to the families that deserve an answer with accountability, and another notch in the belt of reasons why we don't take Russian press releases seriously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 flew for about an hour with no hydraulics at all with a very similar damage pattern.

how many times in life do you experience AD hits from within a plane as a pilot/passenger? how would they know what to expect? it's clear that the missile hit the back of the plane (tail / fuselage), how would the pilot know whats happening besides losing hydraulics?

AD rocket, by design, inflicts catastrophic damage even on military aircraft that have far better survivability. Even 10K rounds per minute autocannon of the Pantsir would generate such a dense cloud of shrapnel it'd be difficult to mistake it for "birds", especially for the pilots.

the plane probably got hit by a pantsir missile, not autocannon fire. the damage is consistent with a proximity fuse warhead detonation. mh17 had exactly the same type of holes, except the buk missile is more powerful...

That'd be a first, if that's the case. To the best of my knowledge to date there haven't been any other cases where a civilian plane was hit by an AD missile and continued to fly. I can't find anything on Google either. The closest thing we got is flight TWA 840 in 1986 on which flew with a gaping hole in the fuselage, but that wasn't AD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_840_bombing

well then it's a first. i don't find it that unbelievable that a missile detonates near a plane and damages it but not enough for it to immediately crash...