An aircraft from the Russian airline Ural Airlines made an emergency landing in a field near Kamenka, in Novosibirsk, Siberia, with 165 people on board, including passengers and crew.

The plane, an A320 with the registration RA-73805 that was operating flight U6 1383 between the cities of Sochi and Omsk, attempted an initial landing at the destination airport. At that moment, the pilot reported hydraulic problems and then circled the city, ascending to 18,000 feet before losing altitude and making an emergency landing in a field in the Ubinsky district of the Novosibirsk region.

The CEO of Ural Airlines, Sergey Skuratov, stated in a press conference that the captain of the aircraft, fearing the possibility of running out of fuel to reach the Novosibirsk airport, made the decision to perform the emergency landing.

 

At the moment, the TASS agency reports that there are no casualties among the 165 souls on board. In addition, the photos and videos of this A320’s evacuation bring to mind that incident of an A321 from the same airline that made an emergency landing in a cornfield after suffering a bird strike on August 15, 2019, in which, fortunately, there were also no casualties among the 234 passengers.

Due to the sanctions imposed following the war in Ukraine, the Airbus and Boeing planes of Russian airlines are running out of spare parts, which accentuates the impact on Ural’s operations from an incident like today’s.

Currently, their fleet consists of 22 A320s (with an average age of 17.7 years), 14 A321s (16.1 years), 8 A321neos (2.3 years), 4 A319s (16.9 years), and 3 A320neos (3.9 years).

The aircraft involved in today’s incident, RA-73805, is 19.5 years old, having been received in March 2004, accumulating 70,370 flight hours and 26,443 cycles as of May 31, 2023, according to information obtained through the Cirium Fleet Analyzer.