ISTANBUL
Kazakhstan said on Tuesday that the decrypted data from the black boxes belonging to the Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) plane that crashed near the city of Aktau will arrive in the country “in the coming days.”
“In the coming days, the members of the aviation accident investigation commission are expected to arrive in Astana with decrypted materials from the flight recorders,” said a statement by the Kazakh Transport Ministry on Telegram.
The statement further said that the experts will immediately begin studying the decrypted data from the black boxes as soon as they arrive in the Kazakh capital.
Last week, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the investigation commission established by Astana sent the two black boxes retrieved from the crash site to Brazil for decoding.
“I am sure that this step is the only right decision necessary for an objective and impartial investigation,” Tokayev said.
On Dec. 25, an AZAL plane, en route from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny in Russia’s Chechen Republic, crashed 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Kazakh city of Aktau on the Caspian Sea coast, killing 38 out of 67 people on board.
Initial statements said a bird collision might have caused the Embraer 190 aircraft to crash, though footage from the site revealed large holes in the tail section of the aircraft, leading to speculation of a possible attack.
A day after the incident, senior Azerbaijani officials confirmed to Anadolu reports suggesting the plane crash was caused by a Russian missile system.
Later in the month, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone conversation with Aliyev, during which he apologized for the incident that took place over Russian airspace and offered his condolences.
A day later, Aliyev said the crashed plane’s tail was severely damaged as a result of “weapons fire from the ground,” demanding that Moscow issue an “acknowledgment of guilt, punishment of those responsible, and payment of compensation.”
