Two dead, 40 injured after ALL engines fail on passenger jet in Moscow emergency landing
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:35 PM on 4th December 2010
Two people were reported dead and 40 injured after a passenger jet with 155 people on board was forced to make an emergency landing in Moscow today after all three engines cut out. The plane had taken off from Vnukovo Airport and was en route to Makhachkala, the capital of Russia's southern region of Dagestan.
The pilot received signals that all three engines had cut out about 50 miles into the flight at an altitude of 9,100 meters, and requested an emergency landing at Domodedovo, to the southeast of Moscow.
Passengers escape the wreckage of the Tupolev jet after its emergency landing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport
'According to preliminary information two people have died as a result of the emergency landing of the Tu-154 at Domodedovo Airport, and tens were injured,' a spokeswoman for Moscow's regional investigative committee for transport told Russian news agencies. Nearly two dozen ambulances were on their way to the site of the accident scene. There was no word on what caused the engines to fail. Russia's flagship carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew all of its Tu-154s from service after a series of crashes led to safety fears.
Domodedovo Airport in Moscow where the stricken plane was forced to make an emergency landing
Russia's flagship airline Aeroflot recently withdrew all of its Tupolev TU-154 aircraft after a series of crashes
But the Tupolev midrange jets, which originally entered service in the Seventies, remain the mainstay of smaller airlines across Russia and the former Soviet Union. It is banned from Europe due to excessive engine noise.
The plane that crashed in heavy fog earlier this year killing Polish President Lech Kaczynski was also a Tu-154.
