MOSCOW: Russian officials hailed a “miracle” on Friday after a passenger plane made an emergency landing in a Siberian field and all 18 people on board emerged with only cuts and bruises.
The An-28 plane, operated by Siberian Light Aviation (SiLA), was flying from the town of Kedrovy to Tomsk when communication was lost, Governor Sergei Zhvachkin’s office said.
The emergencies ministry announced later that the plane had been found, apparently after making a “hard landing”, and that survivors had been spotted.
The aviation agency said the plane had been found 155 kilometres (96 miles) from the airstrip in Tomsk.
Zhvachkin’s office announced that everyone on board, including three crew, were alive and that medics had “recorded mainly bruises and abrasions”.
“We all believed in a miracle. And thanks to the professionalism of the pilots, it came true: everyone is alive,” the governor said.
Images circling on social media showed the plane flipped upside down with dirt inside the cabin and its nose destroyed.
One of the plane’s pilots, Farukh Khasanov, said both engines had failed.
“We had no time to think, we had to do our work,” he was cited by the TASS news agency as saying.
“Everything is fine with us. Everyone is alive and well — that’s the most important thing.”
Zhvachkin said that all the passengers and crew would be taken to the regional capital Tomsk, where they would be examined by doctors.
The Interfax news agency cited a local official as saying that six passengers refused to take a helicopter from the crash site to Tomsk and would be travelling instead by minibus.
The incident comes just 10 days after the crash of an An-26 plane in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, killing all 28 people on board.
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