A Yamal Airlines passenger plane suffered exterior damage after colliding with a rare white ptarmigan while landing in the northern Russian city of Novy Urengoy.
The regional Superjet aircraft was completing a scheduled flight from Ufa when the incident occurred. Despite the collision during the final approach, the pilots landed safely, and none of the passengers on board suffered any injuries.
According to the Russian Telegram news channel Shot, the bird collided directly with the forward landing gear assembly of the airliner. The impact shattered the main landing light, damaged its accompanying electrical connector, and broke the taxiing light, a failure that raised concerns about degraded forward visibility for the flight crew during the touchdown.
Protected Arctic Wildlife
The bird involved in the strike was identified as a white ptarmigan, a cold-climate grouse species that is listed in regional Red Books of protected wildlife. Known for shedding its brown summer feathers in favour of dense white winter plumage to blend into Arctic snowscapes, the ptarmigan inhabits tundra and taiga regions across northern Russia.
The Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, where Novy Urengoy is located, sits in northern Siberia and experiences long, harsh winters with minimal daylight. Regional carrier Yamal Airlines relies on twin-engine Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft to maintain vital domestic transport links connecting Siberian industrial centres with cities such as Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan.
Recent Bird Strikes in Russian Aviation
External landing and taxiing lights mounted on an aircraft's nose gear strut are essential for lighting runway surfaces during low-light arrivals. Collisions with wildlife remain an ongoing operational challenge for commercial aviation, particularly during low-altitude descent and rollout when aircraft share airspace with local bird populations.
The strike in Novy Urengoy follows a similar occurrence in the Russian Far East. A domestic passenger aircraft flying from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Okha was recently forced to turn around and return to its departure airport after striking a bird in mid-air, with travellers later flown to their destination on a backup aircraft.
