An Airbus 321 with 233 people on board landed this Thursday in an emergency cornfield outside Moscow, with no fatalities recorded, the Russian Federal Agency for Air Transport (Rosaviatsia) reported.
According to the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations, at least 10 people, including three children, were injured, none seriously, in the accident.
The device, belonging to the Russian company Uralskie Avialinii, collided with a flock of birds as soon as it took off from Zhukovsky airport, outside Moscow, bound for Simferopol (Crimea), said a spokeswoman for Rosaviatsia cited by the Interfax agency.
According to the first information, as a result of the collision with the birds, one of the two turbines of the plane was turned off and the other considerably reduced its power.
The Airbus landed in the cornfield and with the engines off.
"The pilots acted correctly, according to the instructions (for these cases), as they were prepared. Before the emergency landing they turned off the engines," Uralskie Avialinii CEO Sergey Skurátov told Interfax.
He added that plane crashes with flocks of birds "are very rare, maybe one in 50 years."
"I would like to express my special thanks to the hostesses, to our girls. They organized the evacuation very well," said Skuratov.
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