MOSCOW: TheKremlin lauded two Russian pilots as heroes and said they would be handed stateawards after they landed an airliner carrying 233 people in a cornfield outsideMoscow after striking a flock of birds during take-off. Russians have said itwas a miracle that no one was killed when the Ural Airlines Airbus 321 camedown in a field southeast of Moscow with its landing gear up after hitting apassing flock of gulls, disrupting the plane's engines. Up to 55 people,including 17 children, were treated for injuries, six of whom have beenhospitalized, Russian news agencies quoted the emergencies ministry as saying.
State televisionsaid the incident was being dubbed the "miracle over Ramensk", thename of the district near Moscow where the plane came down around one kilometerfrom Zhukovsky International Airport. The Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid praisedpilot Damir Yusupov as a "hero," saying he had saved 233 lives,"having masterfully landed a plane without its landing gear with a failingengine right in a corn field."
Some drewcomparisons with US Airways Flight 1549 which performed a landing on the HudsonRiver in New York in 2009 after striking a flock of geese. "Wecongratulate the hero pilots who saved people's lives," Kremlin spokesmanDmitry Peskov said, adding that the Kremlin would see that the men were quicklygiven state honors. "There's no doubt about this. They will be givenawards."
Belly-floplanding
The plane'sengines were turned off when it executed the emergency landing and it also hadits landing gear up, according to Elena Mikheyeva, a spokeswoman for Russia'scivil aviation authority. Footage shot by passengers showed the flight lastedless than two minutes and that the engines had experienced difficulties almostimmediately after take-off.
Vitya Babin, 11,who was on the plane with his mother and sister, said passengers had not beenwarned there was going to be an emergency landing. There was silence in thecabin and then screams began when it touched down, footage showed. "Wewere not warned," said Babin. An unnamed passenger interviewed by statetelevision said the plane had started to shake moments after it took off.
"Fiveseconds later, the lights on the right side of the plane started flashing andthere was a smell of burning. Then we landed and everyone ran away," hesaid. Passengers were evacuated via escape slides and were told to distancethemselves from the plane. "One of the stewardesses said there was smokecoming from the plane and we immediately panicked. We ran after one of the men.He said follow me," Babin said. A local resident quoted by radio stationGovorit Moskva said the gulls that struck the plane had probably come from anillegal rubbish dump near Zhukovsky airport.
Moscow regionofficials, however, rejected that assertion and said the nearest rubbish dumpto the airport was 14 kilometers away, TASS news agency reported. The plane wasdue to fly to Simferopol in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia fromUkraine in 2014. Safety concerns have plagued Russia's airline industry sincethe 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, though standards are widely recognizedto have sharply risen on international routes in particular in recent years. -Reuters