AZERBAIJAN: Azeri airline company Silk Way Airlines suspends flights to Afghanistan pending investigation into a cargo plane crash north of Kabul

Record ID: 217914

  • Title: AZERBAIJAN: Azeri airline company Silk Way Airlines suspends flights to Afghanistan pending investigation into a cargo plane crash north of Kabul
  • Date: 10th July 2011
  • Summary: BAKU, AZERBAIJAN (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF BAKU AIRPORT, INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL EXTERIOR
  • Embargoed: 25th July 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan
  • Country: Azerbaijan
  • Topics: Accidents
  • Reuters ID: LVA3ASAO3CR9QGQAFN34ZP8RCLMG
  • Story Text: Azeri airline company Silk Way Airline said it was stopping all flights to Afghanistan after this week's crash of its cargo plane, a representative of the airline told journalists during a news conference on Saturday (July 9) in Baku .
    An Azeri cargo plane chartered by foreign troops in Afghanistan crashed north of Kabul early on Wednesday (July 6), killing all nine crew members on board, officials said earlier this week.
    Vice-president of Azeri state air company AZAL and head of the plane crash investigation commission, Ilham Amirov, said Azerbaijan's primary goal is currently to get to the crash site to evacuate the bodies of the crew members and to find the flight recorders, the so called "black boxes", to conduct a thorough investigation.
    He said the crash occurred in a remote area of Afghanistan where armed groups operated, thus neither Azeri nor Afghan representatives had been able to access the crash site.
    "Even the NATO forces can not reach the crash site. We asked them for help, we asked them to encircle the crash site, to provide assistance for civil experts and (investigation) commission members to get there, but they (NATO) can not make it possible till now, they can not do it," Amirov told journalists.
    According to preliminary information, the crash may have been the result of a collision with an unknown object.
    "Neither the plane had any technical problems, nor the pilots tried to violate the flight altitude or to make any other manoeuvre. Everything was under control. We have been flying this way for years," Silk Way Airlines CEO, Zaur Ahundov said on Saturday.
    Azeri state air company AZAL said in a statement that the Il-76 cargo plane belonging to Silk Way Airlines and heading from Baku to Bagram, crashed 25 kilometres from Kabul AZAL said the plane was carrying 18 tonnes of cargo and had nine crew members on board. It did not give any more details on the nature of the cargo. An AZAL official declined comment.
    Bagram is located around 45 km (28 miles) north of the Afghan capital and is home to the largest U.S. air base in the country.
    Abdul Baseer Salangi, the provincial governor of Parwan, where Bagram is located, said the cargo plane was chartered by foreign troops and had crashed in a mountainous area of Siagerd district.
    The plane did not belong to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, a spokesman for the force said.
    Silk Way Airlines is a cargo airline based in Baku and the Ilyushin (IL-76) aircraft is a large Russian-made freighter able to transport outsized and heavy cargo.
    Azerbaijan is part of what the United States refers to as the Northern Distribution Network (NDN) supplying military operations in Afghanistan, and which involves Russia, Latvia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
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