Pilots Land Plane in Field After Bird Strike

A Ural Airlines Airbus A321 landed in a Russian cornfield on Thursday after it lost power to both its engines after a bird strike.

Drone footage captures plane after its belly landing in field outside #Moscow, #Russia#UralAirlines #EmergencyLanding pic.twitter.com/wpZ66BxQ0q

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) August 15, 2019

The flight from Moscow's Zhukovsky airport to Simferopol was struck by seagulls shortly after takeoff, losing one engine almost immediately, and suffering reduced power from the other.

The pilots landed the aircraft successfully in a field southeast of Moscow. All 233 on board evacuated the aircraft via safety slides with no fatalities, but several dozen people sustained minor injuries during the landing and evacuation.

The flight crew elected to put down in the field after shutting down both engines to reduce the possibility of a fire. The undercarriage was not deployed and the pilots carried out a successful belly landing.

Russian media praised the pilots, comparing the landing to a similar incident in 2009 when a US Airways Airbus landed on the Hudson River in New York, also after a bird strike.