Russian Passenger Plane Fails in Flight, Forced to Make Emergency Landing

A Russian Ural Airlines Airbus 320 was forced to land in farmer’s field en route from the Black Sea to Siberia, risking the lives of more than 150 domestic flight passengers.

The Ural Airlines aircraft declared an emergency to air traffic control while flying from the Black Sea resort of Sochi to Omsk in southwestern Siberia on Tuesday, Sept. 12. The pilot was diverting for an emergency landing at a Novosibirsk airfield but was forced to land the plane in an open field in a rural area.

While on final approach at Omsk, the crew initiated a go-around after reporting a hydraulics failure. The aircraft climbed to 18,000 feet and diverted to an airfield at Novosibirsk.

On the way to the divert field the crew calculated that the A320 would run out of fuel about 180 kilometers from Novosibirsk and chose to land in an open field near the village of Kamenka.

Based on the hydraulic failure, the crew believed the Omsk runway was not long enough to make a safe landing.

The failure of the hydraulic system affected the operations of the spoilers and flaps, increasing the required landing distance for the aircraft. As a result, the pilots decided to land at Novosibirsk, which has a longer runway.

While initial calculations suggest the aircraft had enough fuel to reach the alternate airport, fuel consumption was higher than normal because it had already extended its landing gear.

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Rosaviatsia, Russia’s aviation agency, said the pilot landed near the village of Kamenka, next to a forest in the Novosibirsk region. The aircraft reportedly suffered damage to the gear and wings, but none of the 165 people on board, including passengers and crew, were injured.

The aviation agency said an accident investigation and a criminal case was opened for violating air transport safety regulations.

Video on social media showed signs of a fire on the A320’s right wing and a deployed emergency evacuation ramp, with people milling around the downed aircraft.

The incident is believed by many aviation experts to be a result of neglected maintenance by Russian airline companies as a byproduct of international sanctions. Aerospace companies such as Airbus and Boeing have not supplied spare parts due to these restrictions, especially for dual-use military and civilian parts.

Other such incidents occurred on June 15, when a Russian Sukhoi Superjet-100 (SS-100) plane with 54 passengers on board had made an emergency landing in Irkutsk after the air-conditioning system malfunctioned.

Only two days before that incident, another SS-100 jet flying from Moscow to Kazakhstan’s Caspian port city of Aqtau had made an emergency landing in the Russian city of Samara due to problems in one of its engines.