A Russian Airline's Boeing Caught Fire On Takeoff At Moscow Airport
- 16.12.2025, 15:24
The airplane's engine burst into flames.
On the morning of December 16, a Boeing 777 of the Russian airline Nordwind Airlines on a scheduled flight from Moscow to Cuba aborted takeoff, moscowtimes.ru reported with reference to the press service of Sheremetyevo Airport.
There were 432 passengers and 21 crew members on board. No one was injured. During the run-up, the plane's right engine caught fire, Aviatorshchina specified.
According to the Telegram channel, the crew aborted the takeoff at the last moment, resorting to emergency braking, and stopped within the runway. After the flight was towed to the parking lot, passengers were dropped off and taken to the terminal.
Witnesses said they heard a "heavy pop" and the right engine "had a bright flash" before the plane "lost power." Nordwind's press office said the takeoff was aborted due to a "technical malfunction." The flight was postponed for several hours, it was going to be performed by a reserve flight. This is the second incident since the beginning of the month with engine fire on the Russian airline's plane during the flight. On December 3, a Red Wings Boeing 777 from Moscow to Phuket gave a distress signal and requested an emergency landing. On board were 412 passengers and 13 crew members.
In 2025, the number of incidents with Russian airlines' planes amid sanctions and the lack of their own production of spare parts increased about fourfold year-on-year, Novaya Gazeta Europe calculated based on data from the Aviaincident profile channel.
From January to the end of November, more than 800 cases of malfunctions that led to the cancellation or emergency interruption of a flight were recorded, compared with just over 200 such incidents in the same period in 2024.
In 2025, Russian commercial aviation has already seen two accidents and two airplane crashes that killed a total of 53 people, Rostransnadzor reported in October. The largest of them was the crash of an Angara Airlines An-24 airplane in late July near Tynda. At that time, 48 people were killed.