Six years later, IAC published a report on the landing of a Ural Airlines plane in a corn field. The main conclusion: the accident occurred due to seagulls and the actions of the pilots • Meduza • RIMA

Six years later, IAC published a report on the landing of a Ural Airlines plane in a corn field. The main conclusion: the accident occurred due to seagulls and the actions of the pilots

The Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) published the final report ( .pdf ) on the investigation into the emergency landing of the Ural Airlines Airbus A321 near Zhukovsky in the Moscow region in 2019.

The 250-page report was recounted by Russian state news agencies and media outlets, including RBC and Kommersant . Judging by their publications, the commission’s conclusions about the causes of the accident coincide with the conclusions that were unofficially published in 2022.

Experts concluded that the emergency landing was due to both the bird situation at the airport and the actions of the pilots. Computer modeling showed that the flight, which was interrupted after the plane collided with herring gulls, could have been continued, but no one could guarantee its safety.

In particular, the official IAC report states that the actions of the pilots of the aircraft from the very beginning of the flight had “clear signs of disorganization, inconsistency and chaos, that is, partial loss of performance” due to “psycho-emotional stress.”

As Meduza noted in a detailed analysis of the unofficial report, according to ICAO rules, the state conducting the investigation must publish a final report on the incident as soon as possible.

Aviation journalist Andrei Menshenin then noted that the report was not published on the website for bureaucratic reasons due to the impossibility of agreeing on it “at a higher level.”

It is unclear why the IAC published the report now. The organization's website indicates that the investigation was completed in April 2022. At the same time, TASS claims that the final report was prepared in 2021.

In 2019, a Ural Airlines plane landed in a corn field in the Moscow region due to seagulls getting into the engines. There were 226 passengers on board, 28 people were injured. The ship's commander Damir Yusupov and co-pilot Georgy Murzin received the title of Heroes of Russia.