The
Kremlin lauded two
Russian pilots as heroes and said they would be handed state awards after they landed an airliner carrying 233 people in a cornfield outside
Moscow after striking a flock of birds during take-off.
Russians have said it was a miracle that no one was killed when the Ural Airlines Airbus 321 came down in a field southeast of Moscow with its landing gear up after hitting a passing flock of gulls, disrupting the plane's engines.
State television said the incident was being dubbed the "miracle over Ramensk", the name of the district near Moscow where the plane came down around one kilometer (0.62 miles) from Zhukovsky International Airport.