Two people were killed and dozens injured when a Russian airliner rolled off the runway during an emergency landing at a Moscow airport on Saturday.
A Tu-154 plane with 160 passengers and eight crew members onboard had all the three engines cut out one after another shortly after taking off from Moscow's Vnukovo airport on a domestic flight and made an emergency landing at Domodedovo airport about 70 km away. Early reports said the plane “partially disintegrated” as it skidded off the runway and hit a concrete fence, but had not caught fire.
Three months ago another Russian Tu-154 airliner with 81 people on board made a safe landing at an abandoned airfield in the Siberian taiga after all its systems failed in mid-flight. There were no casualties and the pilots were conferred Russia's top Hero award for their feat.
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The Tu-154 was the workforce of the Soviet civil aviation for the past three decades. It is being phased out and replaced with more modern aircraft.