Russia’s crumbling aviation industry suffers yet another emergency landing

An Aeroflot plane flying from Moscow was forced to make an emergency landing on Friday, the latest in a string of such incidents to hit Russia’s sanctions-stricken aviation industry in recent weeks. The Ministry of Emergency Situations for the Sakhalin Region said the Boeing 777 aircraft carrying 4 crew members and 408 passengers had a warning about a drop in pressure in one of the landing gear wheels during the flight. The plane made an emergency landing at Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk airport. Pictures posted to social media showed damage to the aircraft’s landing gear. Several similar incidents have been reported in recent months – in August, passengers on a Red Wings flight were stuck in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg for 24 hours due to simultaneous “technical malfunctions” on the only two available aircraft. The same month a Russian Pegas Fly plane was delayed in Thailand due to faults with its weather monitoring system. At the start of October, the state airline Aeroflot suffered three technical failures to its planes in a single day. The latest incident comes just a few days after hack of Kremlin records revealed Russia’s airline industry is “on the verge of collapse” due to inadequate spare parts, uncertified repair services, and other systemic maintenance problems caused by sanctions.<br/>