The Ural Airlines A321 plane was taking off from Moscow’s Zhukovsky airport on Thursday morning when it hit a flock of birds, causing one engine to burst into flames and the other to shut down.
At least 23 of the 226 passengers and 7 crew members on board the plane were injured in the crash, including a pregnant woman and nine children. All the injured were described as being in a ‘satisfactory’ condition with ‘light traumas’.
The worst injured were one-year-old Milana Kagramanova, seven-year-old Viktoria Naydina, eight-year-old Diana Kagramanova, and 10-year-old Grigory Kagramanov, all of whom suffered concussions.
Igor Nikulin, 28, Svetlana Babina, 34 and Nina Lysova, 69, were also among those hurt, though the extent of their injuries was not clear.
Captain Damir Yusupov had radioed the airport asking to make an emergency landing but then decided to bring the plane down in a cornfield near Ramenskoye settlement in Moscow region, Russia’s 1TV channel reported.
Passengers reported seeing ‘a flash and then a smell of smoke’ as one of the engines caught fire, before the second also stopped working.
“He had no engine power when he landed,” reports say. One passenger said: ‘We are standing in the middle of the field.’
One boy broke his arm, another one broke his finger. ‘They told us nothing. The engine clapped several times, they tried to restart it, and we began to descend. ‘I was holding onto the cross around my neck and now I do believe in God.’
The captain reported that he got in control of the situation, chose the place for landing and landed.
Source: Daily Mail
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