A Boeing Co. 777 aircraft operated by Rossiya Airlines made an emergency landing in Moscow at 4:44 a.m. local time due to engine trouble, less than a week after a similar aircraft flown by United Airlines Holdings Inc. suffered a dramatic blowout over Denver, shedding debris onto neighborhoods below.
The Rossiya Air flight was operating as a cargo service from Hong Kong to Madrid, according to an employee at Sheremetyevo International Airport, who declined to be named. Neither Boeing nor Rossiya Air were immediately available for comment.
The crew of the plane requested to make the emergency landing after one of the left engine control channels failed, according to Interfax. No injuries were reported. The type of engine wasn’t immediately clear.
Last Saturday’s incident in Colorado involved a PW4077 engine made by Pratt & Whitney, a division of Raytheon Technologies Corp. A preliminary examination of fragments from the engine suggested a crack that grew gradually over time prompted the failure. The incident led to groundings of all the Boeing 777s around the world that use the engine.
In another incident on Feb. 20, a Boeing 747-400 cargo jet operated by Longtail Aviation suffered a failure with its Pratt & Whitney engine shortly after takeoff from Maastricht in the Netherlands. That failure was contained, meaning debris didn’t escape laterally and damage the body of the plane, but two people on the ground were injured. The engine was from the same PW4000 family as the United flight.
