Breaking: Jet crash-lands in field after striking flock of birds

A Russian passenger jet flew into a flock of birds then crash-landed in a cornfield just outside a Moscow airport Thursday, according to Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency.

The Ural Airlines Airbus A321 was carrying 226 passengers and a crew of seven from Moscow’s Zhukovsky airport to Simferopol, a city on the Crimean Peninsula when it ran into trouble.

Shortly after takeoff, the plane “collided with a flock of gulls,” according a statement from the agency.Some of the birds were sucked into its engine.

The emergency landing took place in a field less than a kilometer (0.62 miles) away from the airport’s runway.

Videos posted to social media show the passengers of flight U6178 evacuating from the plane and making a path through the field.

In one video, a female passenger walking through the tall green stalks can be heard saying “second birth,” noting that she was lucky to just be alive.

Pilot Damir Yusupov, 41, and co-pilot Georgy Murzin, 23, were praised by the airline for their professionalism in difficult circumstances.”Precisely due to their professionalism, self-possession and coordinated actions (they) managed to land a plane without tragic consequences,” a Ural Airlines statement said.

Yekaterina Korotkova, a spokesperson for the Moscow Inter-Regional Transport Prosecutor’s Office, said that a probe has been opened into the accident.