Aqtau Plane Crash: Who Were The Heroic Pilots?

Among the 38 people killed in the Embraer-190 crash were the pilots - Captain Igor Kshnyakin and the second pilot, Alexander Kalyaninov, Orda reports.

Igor Kshnyakin had flight experience of more than 15 thousand hours.

11.2 thousand were as captain, according to the press service of Azerbaijan Airlines. 

Russian media, citing Kshnyakin's wife, call him a citizen of the Russian Federation. While the day before, Azerbaijan Airlines reported that all crew members were citizens of Azerbaijan.

Alexander Kalyaninov graduated from the Baku European Lyceum. 

He fulfilled his dream: he became a pilot. We were very happy about his success. A smart, handsome young man died in the prime of his life. He died while serving, saving dozens of lives, the school said in a statement.

It is unclear how many hours of flying time Kalyaninov had. 

Baku.ws quotes the deputy head of the flight safety department of Azerbaijan Airlines, Farhad Nasirov, who met with the pilots before their final flight. 

I met with both captains in the morning. They were in a good mood,  he said.

Previous reports indicated that all crew members died, but it later became known that three survived. 

However, according to Azerbaijani media, a flight attendant, Hokume Aliyeva, also died in the crash.

According to Modern.az, she was born in 1991 in Nagorno-Karabakh.

She told everyone, "Everything will be fine."

Aliyeva graduated from Baku State University's Law Department. As of 2016, she worked in aviation, first as a translator and then as a flight attendant. 

According to her father, she was going to work as a lawyer at the airline, and this was to be her final flight.

Aviation expert Serik Mukhtybayev has highlighted the two pilots' heroic efforts in an interview with Orda.kz. 

Russian journalist and pilot Alexey Pivovarov writes about this as well.

Judging by the fact that the landing gear was released and the pilots asked to bring them straight-in, they were preparing for an emergency landing. Thus, we are not talking about the plane 'falling' - it made a hard landing. And the fact that there were survivors after this is probably due to the merit of the perished crew. In general, according to the first impressions, the pilots encountered one or more malfunctions and tried to do everything they could,  he wrote.

Original Author: Igor Ulitin