Russian pilot says landing in cornfield was his only chance

A Russian pilot who managed to smoothly land his disabled plane in a cornfield after birds hit both engines said Friday that a quick landing was his only chance and he was not afraid of handling it.

The experienced captain, 41-year-old Damir Yusupov, said when one of the plane's engines shut down after the bird strike upon taking off from Moscow's Zhukovsky Airport that he had hoped to circle the airport and land normally.

But then, he said, his second engine cut off moments later, leaving him no choice.

He landed his Ural Airlines A321 so gently in the head-high corn that just one of the 233 people on board was hospitalised.

Yusupov's feat Thursday drew comparisons to the 2009 "miracle on the Hudson," when Captain Chesley Sullenberger safely ditched his plane in New York's Hudson River after a bird strike disabled its engines, saving the lives of all 155 people on board.

"I didn't feel any fear," Yusupov told reporters in a televised interview from Yekaterinburg. "I saw a cornfield ahead and hoped to make a reasonably soft landing. I tried to lower vertical speed to make the plane land as smoothly as possible and glide softly."