11 December 2023 , 10:10
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A Russian passenger aircraft carrying a mystery “radioactive cargo” was forced to make an emergency landing today.
A Utair Boeing-737 with 109 people on board suffered “unsynchronised flap retraction” soon after takeoff from Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, according to reports. After climbing to 4,000ft an emergency was declared and the crew flew for 40 minutes before making a landing at “increased speed” at the same airport due to the technical problem in the wing, according to an air incident report.
News outlets Baza and Shot said the plane with a crew of five was carrying 19kg of an unspecified radioactive substance to Khanty-Mansiysk in western Siberia. “The dangerous cargo on board was not damaged,” reported Shot. “There were no reports of injuries to passengers.”
It's the latest in a series of aviation disasters in Russia, including when this Tu-204 cargo plane caught on fire on December 7 (social media/e2w)The Russian Transport Prosecutor’s Office said “the aircraft commander reported a [problem] with the wing mechanisation, and therefore a decision was made to return to the airport of departure…. The landing was completed safely.”
The Russian authorities did not comment on the radioactive cargo, but Shot said that it was in the category of “dangerous goods”. Its carriage had been “permitted by the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation”.
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It is the latest in a spate of terrifying plane emergencies - more than one a day this month - in Russia. In a separate incident today, a military An-12 aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing with eight crew members at Khurba airport in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The reason for the emergency was unclear.
Earlier, a Superjet SSJ-100 aircraft with 106 on board was forced to return to its departure airport in Yakutsk - the world’s coldest city - after its landing gear failed to retract. A plane with 111 people on board suffered sudden depressurisation with oxygen masks released before the Airbus A319 plunged ahead of emergency landing.
Both engines on board the Boeing 737 blew up (social media, e2w news)Children screamed and passengers uttered prayers as the crew lost height to cope with the emergency after taking off from thermal resort Mineralnye Vody. Masks were released on the state-owned Rossiya airline aircraft which was bound for St Petersburg. “We started to drop sharply,” said a passenger. "Everyone’s masks dropped down over their heads.” A man on board said: "Children were screaming, women were praying, everyone was stressed.”
A day earlier “micro-explosions” led to fires in both engines of a Boeing 737, resulting in an emergency landing. The S7 airline plane with 175 passengers was flying from Novosibirsk - Russia’s third largest city - to capital city Moscow. A Tu-204 cargo aircraft suffered an engine “explosion” heard from the ground after takeoff from Ulan-Ude, also in Siberia. Footage showed the aircraft ablaze as it jettisoned fuel and made an emergency landing.
Russia is suffering an unprecedented spate of air incidents amid signs that Western sanctions are hampering the servicing and maintenance of planes, with problems obtaining spare parts. Since the spring of 2022, airlines have been requiring staff not to enter equipment defects in flight log books, said one report. A former Nordwind airline pilot said many pilots are now relying on “Russian luck.”
In the first eight months of this year, there were 120 air accidents in Russia involving civil aircraft operated by Russian airlines. This is more than double the number in recent years despite significantly fewer flights as a result of Putin’s war against Ukraine.