After an old Tupolev 134 aircraft spend more than 24 hours on the apron of a Siberia-based national airport, the harsh weather turned out to be so bad the airplane’s wheels simply froze to the ground. Luckily, the local Russians proved to be more adjusted to the cold weather than the machine, so the passengers joined their forces and pushed the aircraft so it could take off.
One of the passengers filmed the entire scene and uploaded the footage on YouTube (obviously). Reports are the temperatures in Igarka, in the Krasnoyarsk region, the third largest city in Siberia, hit a low of about 52 degrees Celsius (-61 Fahrenheit). For locals, who are used to living around 160 km (100mi) away from the Arctic Circle, it’s average weather, but it would seem older machines can’t stand that type of conditions.
It turns out the passengers who helped out were rotation workers, heading to Krasnoyarsk, and they didn’t find their gesture as anything out of the ordinary. Needless to say the plane did eventually make it to destination, proving that things can work out with a little push.
Now that we stumbled upon this little clip, let us expand a bit on the aircraft itself. Codenamed by NATO as Crusty, the Tupolev Tu-134 is a twin-engined airliner, similar to the French Sud Aviation Caravelle and the later-designed American Douglas DC-9.
Built in the Soviet Union from 1966 to 1984, the model in question seems to be the original version model, considering it features a glazed-nose design. Like certain other Russian airliners (including its sister model the Tu-154) it can operate from unpaved airfields. It also was one of the most widely used aircraft in former Warsaw Pact countries, the number in active service is decreasing to noise restrictions.
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