Kazakhstan Plane Crash Survivors Describe Chaos on Azerbaijan Airlines Flight

At first, there was a strange banging noise outside the plane as it approached Grozny, Russia. Then, while one flight attendant was standing in the cabin, something hit his arm, cutting it. The passengers, sensing something was terribly wrong, began panicking. Some began praying.

One passenger recalled thinking it would the last prayer of his life. Then, silence.

The anxious and chaotic scene on board Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was described by two flight attendants — Zulfugar Asadov and Aydan Rahimli — and a passenger, Subhonkul Rakhimov, in interviews with The New York Times on Friday and with an Azerbaijani TV station.

They were among the 29 survivors from the plane that set off on Wednesday with 67 people on board from Baku, Azerbaijan, en route to Grozny, and that crashed in a ball of black smoke and orange flames on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. The pilot was among those who did not survive.

Officials from three countries — Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia — have opened investigations into the cause of the crash.

From his hospital bed in Baku, recalling the terror of the flight, Mr. Asadov said in a phone interview, “Thank God I’m alive.”