A passenger jet made an emergency landing in a corn field outside the Moscow airport after hitting a flock of birds and failing to takeoff, reports CNN.
Miraculously, there were only bruises and cuts to attend to as people got injured but none of the 226 passengers died.
The reason for this was believed to be the pilot’s last-minute heroics, which led to the plane landing softly over a corn-field.
Pilots Damir Yusupov and co-pilot Georgy Murzin were both hailed for their professional approach during extreme circumstances. Further, many passengers believed surviving the freakish accident was like a second birth.
The Ural Airlines Airbus A321 was on its way from Moscow to Simferopol, a city on the Crimean Peninsula, when the mishap forced the pilots to maneuver the plane towards the fields before it ultimately lost altitude and crashed.
A flock of seagulls collided with the airplane upon take-off, resulting in the near-fatal accident.
Talking about how their pilots handled the situation well, Ural released a statement, saying:
Precisely due to their professionalism, self-possession and coordinated actions (they) managed to land a plane without tragic consequences.
Co-pilot Georgy Murzin spoke to media and explained how they got the plane to land safely while minimizing the number of fatalities. He said:
After takeoff, birds got caught in the engines, with the left engine stalling immediately. Then they got caught in the second engine and it became unstable, and also stalled. There wasn’t enough thrust, and we lost altitude. We landed in a field manually — the commander took control.
Even though up to 55 passengers required immediate medical attention, there were no casualties reported during or after the incident thanks to the alert pilots.