An Air India plane flying to San Francisco was forced to land in a remote town in Siberia after an engine failure

Sophia Ankel
Updated ·3 min read
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  • An Air India plane heading to San Francisco was forced to land in Siberia, Russia, on Tuesday.

  • The plane had to make an emergency landing after an engine failure, Air India said.

  • Passengers had to sleep on the floor of a school overnight, social media videos show.

An Air India plane flying to San Francisco was forced to land in a remote town in Siberia after developing engine problems, according to multiple reports.

The Boeing 777, carrying 216 passengers and 16 crew, was forced to land in Magadan, Russia, on Tuesday, Air India said in a statement.

Magadan is a port town located on the shores of the Sea of Okhotsk in northeastern Russia. It takes around eight hours to travel there by air from Moscow.

The group is still waiting for a backup plane to pick them up and bring them to San Francisco, according to the statement. Air India said the flight from New Delhi is expected to leave for Magadan on Wednesday evening.

Vedant Patel, a US State Department spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday that it was likely that American citizens were on the flight given it was bound for the US, though he was unable to indicate how many.

Due to the remoteness of the airport, passengers ended up staying the night in a local school, the statement and social media posts indicated.

Pictures posted by a man who said his mother was on the flight show people sleeping on mattresses on the floor of the school. Another video shows rows of mattresses set up on what appears to be a basketball court. Insider was unable to independently verify footage.

Girvaan Kaahma, a 16-year-old passenger who was on the flight with his relatives, told the Associated Press that his family hadn't been able to use their credit cards to buy items from the vending machine due to sanctions over Russia's war on Ukraine.

Air India said in its statement that "all passengers were eventually moved to makeshift accommodations, after making sincere attempts to accommodate passengers in hotels locally with the help of local government authorities."

The airline did not immediately respond to Insider's request for further comment.

The emergency landing comes a day after Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines, raised the question of whether foreign carriers that fly to the US over Russian airspace should be banned.

"What's going to happen if an airline lands in Russia with some prominent US citizens on board? That is a potential crisis in the making," he said, according to Al Jazeera and other outlets.

Russia barred most airlines from flying over its airspace in retaliation to Western sanctions put in place after its invasion of Ukraine.

However, some Indian, African, Chinese, and Gulf-based carriers are still allowed to fly over Russia.

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