A Russian airliner carrying 170 people was forced to crash-land in a field after a hydraulics failure.
No one was injured in the emergency, which left the Ural Airlines Airbus A320 stranded next to a forest in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia.
Ural said the pilot “selected” the landing site after the jet’s hydraulic systems failed while approaching Omsk.
The incident sparked denials from the airline that it was unable to service its planes due to sanctions on Russia.
Commercial aircraft like airbuses are purpose-built for landing on proper sealed runways, if it’s brought down on soft dirt the engines are filled with dust and debris, the landing gear is damaged as it drags across the field, and the airframe itself could have suffered fractures that won’t become apparent until the hull blows out unexpectedly one day.
It is in one piece but there’s hidden damage to all sorts of things
We X-ray these things all the time.
Many many airliners have slid off runways all the time and reenter service.
For decades Boeing sold a 737 Gravel Kit for their planes to minimize FOD ingest on unimproved surfaces.
http://www.b737.org.uk/unpavedstripkit.htm
The gear didn’t collapse. The damage is probably fairly minimal, including the engines which were probably at idle, and they most likely didn’t use or need thrust reversers.
Not saying it’s a certainty if this happened in the US or EU that it would fly again, but it isn’t impossible.
I will say it’s unlikely because getting it out of a field in one piece is no small task - and probably more expensive than the plane is worth relative to the parts value, but not because of any inherent damage. Just because the engines are the most valuable thing on a plane and much easier to take those off the plane than move the airframe without damaging it more.
OK I see, still a bit hilarious, that while they may be short of planes, they lose them like this.
This is a great example of “it’s expensive to be poor”