Baku:

The Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan this week killing 38 people, was damaged due to a shooting from the ground in Russia, the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday. He also accused Moscow of having tried to hide the cause of a deadly jet crash and called for Russia to admit “guilt” in the disaster.

President Aliyev said he regretted that “some circles” in Russia had tried to hush up the truth about the crash, in which 38 of the 67 people on board were killed, by sowing false narratives about the causes of the crash, the Azerbaijan state television reported.

Baku regretted that Moscow “put forward theories” that “clearly showed the Russian side wanted to cover” up the issue, he said.

“The facts are that the Azerbaijani civilian plane was damaged from the outside over Russian territory, near the city of Grozny, and almost lost control,” Aliyev said in televised comments, according to state news agency, Azertag.

“We also know that electronic warfare systems put our plane out of control,” he said, adding that “at the same time, as a result of fire from the ground, the tail of the plane was also severely damaged.”

He added that “of course,” the Azerbaijani plane “was hit by accident. Of course, there can be no talk of a deliberate act of terror here.”

“Therefore, admitting the guilt, apologizing in a timely manner to Azerbaijan, which is considered a friendly country, and informing the public about this – all these were measures and steps that should have been taken,” he said. 

Putin’s “Apology”

This came after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Saturday “apologised” to Aliyev for what the Kremlin called a “tragic incident”, but he stopped short of accepting that it might have been hit by Russian fire.

However, Putin did admit that Russian air defences were at work when the passenger plane tried to land in Grozny before crashing. Moscow had earlier said that Grozny, where the plane was due to land but instead crashed in western Kazakhstan, was attacked by Ukrainian drones that day.

The Kremlin said Putin apologised to Azerbaijani leader Aliyev over the “tragic incident” in a phone call, but did not say Russian air defence shot the plane.

Azerbaijan’s Allegations

Earlier, Azerbaijan’s transport minister said the plane that crashed on December 25 was subjected to “external interference” and damaged inside and out, as it tried to land in Russia’s southern republic of Chechnya.

“All [survivors] without exception stated they heard three blast sounds when the aircraft was above Grozny,” Rashad Nabiyev said.

In an earlier statement issued after Putin’s phone call with Aliyev, Baku’s presidency appeared to show no doubt that the plane was hit over Russia.

“President Ilham Aliyev emphasised that the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane encountered external physical and technical interference while in Russian airspace, resulting in a complete loss of control,” the statement said. 

Aliyev’s office said Baku has also demanded an investigation “ensuring those responsible are held accountable.”

A file photo of the Azerbaijan Airlines crash on December 25 in which 38 people onboard were killed
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Instances of GPS interference on passenger aircraft, including ‘spoofing’ with false signals, are on the rise over conflict zones globally, including on India’s borders with Pakistan, which are among the top sites for such occurrences, according to OPSGROUP, a voluntary group of 8,000 aviation personnel, including pilots, who share information on risks to flights. The GPSjam portal also lists India’s borders with Pakistan and Myanmar as among the top five regions where more than 10% of aircraft reported low navigation accuracy.

‘Spoofing’ is a form of cyber attack that includes false GPS signals to mislead navigation equipment. It is seen in conflict zones and is used to attack drones that are increasingly used in modern warfare. Interference with GPS was recently seen on the Embraer jet involved in the Azerbaijan Airlines crash on December 25 in which 38 people onboard were killed. On Saturday (December 28, 2024), Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised to his Azerbaijan counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, for the “tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace” and said that Russian air defence was repelling attacks from Ukraine’s combat drones in Russian towns.

According to a report published by the OPSGROUP in September 2024, the first series of GPS spoofing was identified in September 2023 in the area of northern Iraq, centred on Baghdad. In 2024, new spoofing locations were identified in the Black Sea region, western Russia and the Baltics, the North and South Korea border areas, western Ukraine, and the India-Pakistan border.

The report said there was “daily spoofing” since May 2024 in the Delhi Flight Information Region. It also ranked this area at the ninth position among the top 20 Flight Information Regions, with 316 aircraft impacted by spoofing between July 15 to August 15. The rank was based on the analysis of 17,000 flights.

Globally, instances of spoofing have increased from 300 flights impacted daily in January to 1,500 flights impacted daily by August, the report said.

In an advisory in November 2023, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) asked airlines to develop standard operating procedures and provide bi-monthly reports on such occurrences. This data is not available publicly. The Hindu requested the Ministry of Civil Aviation to share this data, but there was no response till the time of going to press.

One IndiGo pilot reported losing both GPS systems for a few minutes while he was flying out of Amritsar earlier this month. Several other pilots have said that “nearly every flight” to Amritsar either experiences interference or spoofing. Flights to Dubai, Doha and other Gulf destinations from northern parts of India also experience false GPS signals, as do flights to Bangkok, Vietnam, Hong Kong while crossing Myanmar.

Pilots have also said flight tracking website flightradar24 can sometimes show, albeit inaccurately, that there had been a flight diversion mid-air because of loss of data used to indicate the aircraft’s location to other aircraft and air traffic control, resulting in an immediate message from the airline’s operation control centre.

While aircraft systems are built with several redundancies, including the Inertial Reference System that’s also used for navigation, which continue to operate safely for up to five hours even if a primary system fails, one pilot described the phenomenon of GPS spoofing and interference as one of flying with “one’s hands tied to one’s back”.

Spoofing the GPS could also result in errors in the speed display, or trigger a terrain warning by tricking the navigation system into believing it’s at a dangerously low altitude or in proximity to terrain. Though pilots don’t receive an alert inside the cockpit during spoofing, crew are able to detect such events from the ‘incoherent’ information displayed on various instruments.

The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation held its 14th Air Navigation Conference in Montreal between August 26 to September 6 on aviation safety concerning interference to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). It expressed “strong concerns on the serious recent escalation of GNSS harmful interference” and condemned interferences “not clearly justified by security or defence needs”. It recommended that states under the International Civil Aviation Organization “acknowledge that military shall notify aviation authorities, spectrum regulators and ANSPs (aviation navigation service providers) about their GNSS intentional interference activities whenever possible”.

Representational image.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

An Embraer passenger plane flying from Azerbaijan to Russia crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday (December 25, 2024) with 67 passengers and five crew on board, Kazakh authorities announced, saying 12 people had survived.

Unverified video of the crash showed the plane, which was operated by Azerbaijan Airlines, bursting into flames as it hit the ground and thick black smoke then rising.

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The Central Asian country’s Emergencies Ministry said in a statement that fire services had put out the blaze and that survivors were being treated at a nearby hospital.

Azerbaijan Airlines said the Embraer 190 aircraft, with flight number J2-8243, had been flying from Baku to Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechnya, but had been forced to make an emergency landing approximately 3 km from the Kazakh city of Aktau.

Russia begins probe

Russian news agencies said the plane had been rerouted due to fog in Grozny.

Authorities in Kazakhstan said they had begun looking into different possible versions of what had happened, including a technical problem, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported.