Kazakhstan plane crash survivor describes jet 'swinging like a boat in a wild river'

Transcript

Aslan Nazaraliyev couldn't think about anything except his two little girls as the plane he was on plummeted to the ground shortly after takeoff Friday.

The businessman was aboard a Bek Air flight that crashed shortly after departing from Almaty, Kazakhstan, in the pre-dawn hours. 

"I was sure that I [would] be dead soon, and the first thing and only thing in my mind was my daughters," Nazaraliyev told As It Happens guest host Helen Mann. "What will my two daughters do without their father?"

The Fokker 100 jetliner hit a concrete fence and a two-storey building, killing at least 12 of the 98 people onboard, authorities said. Fifty-four people have been hospitalized, and at least 10 of them are in critical condition.

The cause of the crash is still unknown. Roman Skylar, Kazakhstan's deputy prime minister, said authorities were looking at two possible scenarios: pilot error and technical failure. 

'I was not scared for myself' 

Nazaraliyev travels regularly for work, and said he recognized immediately that something was wrong after the plane took off. 

There was was a strange noise from the left side of the plane, he said, almost like something shattering. 

"It was clear the plane lost the balance. It started ... swinging like a boat in a wild river," he said. 

He put away his phone, tightened his seatbelt and braced for impact, thinking of his seven- and four-year-old girls back home. 

"I was not scared for myself," he said. "I was scared for my children."

Then came the crash.

"The ceiling started coming down and smashing everyone," he said. "It was falling apart, all these particles."

Nazaraliyev said he watched the ceiling crush the passengers in the rows ahead — including the man sitting right in front of him in row 14.

The ceiling stopped falling at row 15, where Nazaraliyev was seated, he said.

The plane came to a halt and the lights went off. Someone opened an emergency exit, and the passengers made their way out into the dark, cold morning, using their phones as flashlights. 

They clamoured over the icy wing of the plane, he said, slipping as they escaped the wreckage.

"Everyone was shouting. Someone was asking someone to call the emergency. Someone was crying. Lots of noise," he said. "It was messy."

Government officials said the plane underwent de-icing before the flight.

Nazaraliyev said he and some of the other passengers who were unscathed started pulling injured people from the debris, where they were trapped.

"Somehow their will to help those people who were injured really badly I think maybe [was] stronger than the risk of danger of fire," he said. 

Flights suspended

In a statement on its Facebook page, the airport said there was no fire, and a rescue operation began immediately.

Around 1,000 people were working at the snow-covered crash site. Dozens more in Almaty lined up at a local blood bank to donate for the injured.

The government promised to pay families of the dead around $10,000 each.

Authorities quickly suspended all Bek Air and Fokker 100 flights in Kazakhstan while the investigation got underway.

The Fokker 100 is a mid-sized, twin-engine jet. The company that manufactured it went bankrupt in 1996, and production stopped the following year.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered an inspection of all airlines and aviation infrastructure in the country. 

Once emergency workers arrived on the scene, and those with serious injuries had been helped, Nazaraliyev says he signed a release form and took a taxi home.

He hadn't yet called his family to tell them what happened. "I didn't want them to panic," he said. 

He broke that news when he arrived home unexpectedly early — wet and shivering. His wife made him a hot cup of tea.

"I immediately hugged my kids, my wife, and kissed them," he said. 

He said he hasn't yet had time to process what happened — the fact that he survived while so many others did not.

"I didn't even think about that yet," he said. "Maybe tomorrow."

Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from The Associated Press. Interview with Aslan Nazaraliyev produced by Morgan Passi.