System failure plane makes 'miracle' landing in Russia

[H Azmal 0]

BBCi: System failure plane makes 'miracle' landing in Russia

 

Russian pilots have safely landed a passenger plane in Siberia after the aircraft lost power at 10,600m (34,800ft).

 

None of the 81 passengers and crew was injured in the emergency landing on a disused military airstrip on Tuesday, Russian officials said.

 

There was only minimal damage to the plane, they added.

 

Russian blogs and social networking sites celebrated the incident as a "miracle" and the pilots as "heroes".

 

The plane, a Tupolev-154, was en route from the Siberian city of Polyarny to Moscow when it lost power.

 

With the aircraft's fuel pump, navigation equipment and radio paralysed, the pilots glided the plane to a lower altitude and landed it on an airfield near the village of Izhma in the Komi region, about 1,500 km (930 miles) from Moscow.

 

The Tupolev overshot the end of the tarmac by about 200m (656ft) before coming to a stop in a bog, Russia's general prosecutor said in a statement.

 

The 72 passengers and nine crew left the plane shocked but unhurt, the statement added.

 

Russian media reported that all passengers had been flown to Moscow on another plane, with the exception of a couple who preferred to go by train.

[Pieter C. 5]

RA-85684 of Alrosa; nice livery, btw...

 

See also:

 

http://www.jacdec.de/news/news.htm

 

http://www.avherald.com/h?article=430a1d01&opt=0

 

Kudos to the crew for putting a disabled plane on the ground without any casualties !!!

[A Ong 0]

Wow!! Great work of the stick by the pilots!! Reminds me of the Gimli Glider.

[Denny Yen 0]

 

 

 

 

 

TU-154 Alrosa airlines with 72 passengers and 9 crew, losts its power supply, fuel pumps, radio link and navigation equipment mid-air. The pilots glided the plane down from 34,780 ft and crash-landed at a defunct airfield for helicopters and small planes in Izhma town in the Komi region in Russia's north-west. The plane overran the runway by 650 ft and eventually crashed into a nearby forest.

 

Russian airliner lands in forest, no one hurt

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV (AP) – 12 hours ago

 

MOSCOW — Russia's top investigative agency has launched a probe into the emergency landing of a passenger jet that rolled into a forest without hurting anyone, officials said Wednesday.

 

The Tupolev Tu-154 airliner was carrying 72 passengers and nine crew when it suffered an electrical system failure Tuesday while flying from the northern Siberian town of Polyarnyi to Moscow.

 

The pilot managed to descend from the cruising altitude of 10,000 meters (33,000 feet), spot an abandoned military air base and land.

 

But the air base's runway near the village of Izhma in the northern Komi region was too short for the big Tupolev that was landing at a speed much higher than usual because of the systems failure, and the plane rolled off into a nearby forest. Russian television stations showed footage of the airliner sitting among mostly intact young trees.

 

The State Investigative Committee said it would probe what caused the accident. The plane is owned by Alrosa airlines.

 

"We had no time to get scared," passenger Alexey Grishin said on Rossiya television. "We only got scared when we got out of the plane."

 

Grishin and other passengers praised the pilots who managed to land despite overwhelming odds. The electrical system failure meant that the flaps intended to slow the plane down on final approach didn't work.

 

One veteran Russian pilot likened Tuesday's landing to the successful landing of a U.S. Airways jet in the Hudson River in January 2009.

 

"Our boy was just as great an ace as the American pilot who managed to save the people and the craft in an emergency," pilot Yuri Sytnik told the ITAR-Tass news agency.

 

Officials wouldn't comment on possible reasons behind the plane's systems failure. Alexander Neradko, the head of the state civil aviation agency, said Wednesday that the authorities would conduct additional checks but wouldn't ground any Tu-154s pending the investigation.

 

The Tu-154, first flown in 1968, has been a mainstay with Soviet and the Russian civil aviation and hundreds are still in service in Russia and other nations.

[Pieter C. 5]

Here are a few more pictures from a Russian site:

 

http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/volodya-66/album/120267/

 

http://komionline.ru/news/22516

 

What a strong-built aircraft !!! even, main- and nosewheel landing-gear still in place...

Remember, this was a high-speed landing, without slats and flaps...

 

Once again: kudos to the crew for this safe landing !!!

[Gavin Andrew David 6]

Look at that wing , truly clean configuration !

 

I'm surprised the flaps are electrically driven ,

 

with no redundancy with help from hydraulics , which should've been used in the first place