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Beijing-bound Air China plane with 265 aboard lands in Siberia over engine malfunction
An alternate plane, sent by Air China, is set to arrive in Nizhnevartovsk, Rosaviatsia later today, which will take the 260 people to Beijing.
A flight headed to Beijing from London had to make an unscheduled landing in Siberia instead, owing to an engine glitch. There were 265 people aboard the flight, Russia's state aviation watchdog was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters.
"While flying from London to Beijing, the crew of an Air China Boeing 777-300 decided to land at an alternate airfield in Russia," Rosaviatsia, Russia's civil aviation authority, said.
The flight was reportedly a Boeing 777 aircraft and landed in Russia's Nizhnevartovsk airport. "The preliminary cause was a malfunction of one of the engines," authorities further said.
An alternate plane, sent by Air China, was to arrive in Nizhnevartovsk, Rosaviatsia, later on Monday to take the 250 passengers and 15 crew members to Beijing.
The latest case comes a month after a Russian passenger plane safely landed after turning back to Novosibirsk airport in Siberia.
The plane was operated by S7 Airlines, and was headed to Sochi, a Russian city. However, it was forced to turn around to the airport from where it took off "to check the cabin pressure control system."
The plane was a Boeing 737 with seating capacity for 176 passengers manufactured in 2001, news agency Reuters reported.
Before that, a passenger plane had crashed in Russia's eastern Amur region while preparing to land, killing all 48 people on board. The plane operated by a Siberia-based airline called Angara.
