Two separate passenger jets were grounded by engine failure Thursday morning, one of them a Soviet-designed plane that figured in a crash that killed an entire hockey team in September.
A Soviet-designed Yak-42 flying from Saratov was forced to make an emergency landing several minutes after takeoff Thursday morning when one of the plane's engines failed.
Moscow-bound flight 760, operated by Saratov Airlines, lasted 13 minutes, and no injuries were reported. There were 54 passengers on board, RBK reported.
In September a Yak-42 aircraft crashed near Yaroslavl, killing the entire Lokomotiv hockey team and leaving only one survivor. President Dmitry Medvedev ordered an overhaul of the airline system in the wake of the crash, acknowledging problems such as poor aircraft maintenance, a lack of pilots, poor flight training, aging production facilities and negligent state supervision.
A second domestic flight landed with a failed engine in St. Petersburg early Thursday. The Airbus A-319 aircraft operated by airline Rossiya arrived from Novosibirsk with 93 passengers, reaching its destination with no injuries reported, RIA-Novosti said.
Russia was the most dangerous country in which to fly in 2011, with nine crashes claiming 140 lives, surpassing even the Democratic Republic of Congo in aircraft-related fatalities.
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