> Government sources have told Euronews that the damaged aircraft was not allowed to land at any Russian airports despite the pilots’ requests for an emergency landing, and it was ordered to fly across the Caspian Sea towards Aktau in Kazakhstan.
> According to data, the plane’s GPS navigation systems were jammed throughout the flight path above the sea.
I tend to agree with his conclusion that it's unlikely that the Russians attempted to force the jet to crash in the Caspian Sea to cover up the event. Not because Putin's government has any moral qualms, but because they lack the level of organizational competence it would take to come up with a plan like this and carry it out on short notice.
The two nearest airports in the direction away from Russia's war of aggression are the flight's origin at Baku, and Aktau. Baku is closer, but it's on the other side of a mountain range. Aktau is slightly further, on the other side of the Caspian Sea. A water landing is at least possible. Choosing to fly a damaged aircraft the slightly longer route over a lake rather than the shorter route over a mountain range is an eminently sensible decision.
They were jamming GPS long before the mistaken missile strike; it has nothing to do with this flight. (You can see it in the flight's ADS-B track, which disappears before they start descending and turning west into Grozny -- not after they were hit.) You can read malice into the diversion from local airports, or not; I'm not persuaded yet.
You are mixing casual relationships. GPS was jammed because of the Ukrainian drone attack, it's a standard electronic warfare countermeasure and civilian planes are well equipped to fly without relying on GPS. And it's perfectly reasonable to close airports when you have a drone attack in the vicinity (e.g. it's done regularly in Moscow airports).
You can easily verify that the jamming has started _before_ the plane started to lose altitude. In the first place, your scenario makes little sense, since its useless to cover things with jamming while this cover will be immediately blown up by inspecting the black box records. And wouldn't it be better to land the plane on your territory for anyone attempting a cover up?
It’s never reasonable to close an airport to an airplane experiencing an emergency. It’s not something that’s done. At most, ATC might advise against it if something makes it outright dangerous to land there, but the decision ultimately rests with the pilot.
The airport wasn’t exactly closed. Due to weather conditions they simply couldn’t do visual approach. There was no ILS and GPS was jammed, so they had to be diverted. And after they were hit it was too dangerous to use any nearby airport in the mountain zone, even if the weather was fine (they checked Mahachkala and decided against it). Aktau was a really good choice.
Yeah, it was a good choice. Aktau is surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of a really flat half-desert. Had they been able to land at even remotely correct orientation, they could have landed almost anywhere in that general area and would have likely been fine.
