Kazakhstan's Prime Minister Askar Mamin will head a commission to investigate what caused the plane crash that killed 12 people in the morning of 27 December near Almaty airport. According to the ministry, the investigation is looking into a possible breach of flight operation and safety rules.
Preliminary findings will be shared by the commission by 10 January. Until then, all flights operated by the company involved in the incident, Bek Air, and those using the same aircraft, the Fokker 100, are suspended in the country.
What happened?
12 people were killed after a passenger plane travelling from Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, to the capital Nur-Sultan crashed seconds after takeoff. The jetliner, a Fokker 100 aircraft operated by the Kazakh airline Bek Air, took off as scheduled at 07:05 local time (01:21 UTC) as reported by Flightradar24, but struggled to keep altitude and crashed a minute later against a two-storey building.
Flightradar24 later amended the time of take off to 07:21.
The residential area where the plane crashed was immediately evacuated. The low temperatures, just below freezing, could have been a major factor in preventing the plane from catching fire.
Images from the scene of the incident show numerous rescuers surrounding the fuselage and looking through the wreckage, with reportedly 40 ambulance crews sent to provide medical care.
The fuselage ended up crashing into a building and the rear of the plane lying in a field next to the airport. Credit: Emergency Situations Ministry of the Republic of Kazakhstan photo via AP
Who are the victims?
Flight #Z92100 counted five crew members and 93 passengers including mostly Kazakh citizens but also Chinese, Kyrgyz and Ukrainian nationals. Between the 12 victims, according to the news agency AFP, eight people died at the scene, two while being treated at the site of the crash and two in the hospital. The victims were aged between 79 and 33 years old and include the 58-year-old captain of the jet.
67 people were injured, and 49 are still in the hospital, some of which are said to be in a critical condition.
According to Bek Air, the 23-year-old plane was in good conditions. Credit: Flightradar24/AFP
What happened next?
Kazakh deputy prime minister Roman Sklyar said during a televised briefing at the Almaty airport that the crash was either a "pilot error, or a technical malfunction". A technical commission will establish the causes of the plane crash studying the recovered jet's black boxes.
While a day of national grief has been declared in Kazakhstan for 28 December, authorities have suspended all Bek Air and Fokker 100 flights in the country after Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered an inspection of all airlines and aviation infrastructure in the country.
What do we know about the airline and the aircraft?
The plane was built in 1996 and according to the airline was in good conditions.
Bek Air, a company that was founded in 1999 and is specialised in domestic services, had bought its first Fokker 100 in 2012 and now counts a fleet of 8 aircrafts. This incident is the first involving the company since its creation.
The company, however, was one of the Kazakh airlines to be banned from operating in the EU by the European Commission in 2009 for not complying to international safety standards. The ban was lifted in 2016 after major improvements introduced by Kazakh authorities and companies.
Bek Air, whose permission to fly is now temporarily suspended, has expressed its deepest condolences to the families of the victims and declared it is doing everything possible to clarify the details of the incident "as soon as possible".