Aeroflot Plane Makes Fiery Emergency Landing at Moscow Airport, Killing 41 People

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An Aeroflot PJSC plane on a domestic Russian flight made a fiery emergency landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, killing 41 people.

Flight SU1492 to Murmansk, a Sukhoi Superjet, suffered an engine fire after technical problems forced it to return to Moscow on Sunday, Aeroflot said in a statement. The plane, with 73 passengers and five crew members aboard, made a hard landing after which a fire broke out, the airport said on its website.

Aeroflot published a list of 33 survivors on its website, include five who were hospitalized. The list is incomplete and will be updated as new information becomes available, the airline said in a statement dated May 6. The country’s Investigative Committee gave the number of fatalities in a statement on its website.

Aeroflot shares dropped as much as 4.1 percent at the start of trading in Moscow on Monday, the most in more than five months.
The plane took off from Moscow on schedule at 6:02 p.m. and returned to land at 6:30 p.m. after the crew reported a malfunction, the airport said on its website. Video on Russian broadcaster RT’s website showed the plane speeding down the runway with its tail on fire and flames engulfing the rear after it came to a stop on the tarmac.

First Flight

The plane flew for the first time in June 2017, and was delivered to the airline three months later, according to aircraft-tracking website Flightradar24.com.

The Sukhoi Superjet was developed as a competitor to regional jets from foreign manufacturers such as Canada’s Bombardier Inc. and Brazil’s Embraer SA. The Russian civilian plane has been criticized for unreliability by commercial airlines from Mexico’s Interjet to Russia’s Yakutia for frequent grounding due to technical faults and maintenance issues, making the SuperJet economically ineffective to operate.

State-run Aeroflot suffered at least 12 safety incidents in the past 27 years before this latest disaster, according to Aviation Safety Network.

Aeroflot — which has a plan to double its fleet to 520 planes, including 190 Russian-made aircraft, by 2023 — is seeking to quadruple its market value by that time, Chief Executive Officer Vitaly Savelyev told Russian President Vladimir Putin last year.