Moscow to honor hero pilots after emergency
THE Kremlin lauded two Russian pilots as heroes and said they would be handed state awards after they landed an airliner carrying 233 people in a cornfield outside Moscow after striking a flock of birds during takeoff.
Russians have said it was a miracle that no one was killed when the Ural Airlines Airbus 321 came down in a field in the southeast of Moscow with its landing gear up after hitting a passing flock of gulls.
Up to 55 people, including 17 children, were treated for injuries, six of whom have been hospitalized, Russian news agencies quoted the emergencies ministry as saying.
State television said the incident was being dubbed the “miracle over Ramensk,” the name of the district near Moscow where the plane came down around a kilometer from Zhukovsky International Airport.
The Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid praised pilot Damir Yusupov as a “hero,” saying he had saved 233 lives, “having masterfully landed a plane without its landing gear with a failing engine right in a cornfield.”
“We congratulate the hero pilots who saved people’s lives,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that the Kremlin would see that the men were quickly given state honors.
“There’s no doubt about this. They will be given awards.”
The plane’s engines were turned off when it executed the emergency landing and it also had its landing gear up, according to Elena Mikheyeva, a spokeswoman for Russia’s civil aviation authority.
Footage shot by passengers showed the flight lasted less than two minutes and that the engines had experienced difficulties almost immediately after takeoff.
Vitya Babin, 11, who was on the plane with his mother and sister, said passengers had not been warned there was going to be an emergency landing.
There was silence in the cabin and then screams began when it touched down, footage showed.
“We were not warned,” said Babin.
(Reuters)