Emergency landing in Russia with radioactive material onboard
A Russian Utair airplane was forced to make an emergency landing late Sunday to early Monday. The flight, originating from Khanty-Mansiysk and destined for Moscow, ended abruptly in the Russian capital. Insiders reported that the plane was carrying an alarming 42 pounds of radioactive material.
9:26 AM EST, December 12, 2023
The flight was carrying 104 passengers and was operated by a team of five crew members. Around 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, an emergency alert was triggered within the aircraft due to a malfunction with the landing gear. Roughly 30-40 minutes later, the aircraft managed a safe emergency landing at Moscow's Vnukovo airport.
According to Insider, the radioactive cargo onboard remained undamaged during the ordeal, and it's reported that passengers and crew members didn't sustain any injuries.
In parallel, early Monday morning, another aviation incident was reported by Russian media. An An-12 transport plane, carrying eight passengers, was preparing for an emergency landing in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
Insiders emphasized that there have been more than ten incidents involving Russian airlines in recent weeks, both in-flight and upon landing.
The Impact of Sanctions on Aviation
The Moscow Times reported last Friday that in December of the previous year, as many as 10 civilian aircraft in Russia experienced in-flight malfunctions. This surge in incidents coincides with a period when the Kremlin has been under Western sanctions for nearly two years.
In the spring of 2022, the United States and European Union imposed sanctions specifically targeting the Russian aviation sector. Following these sanctions, as reported by the portal, carriers began masking technical faults, and flights continued to operate despite these issues. The portal interpreted the incidents in December as an indicator that failures in Russian civil aviation could be becoming a widespread phenomenon.
