Is Your Flight Delayed? Siberians Laugh at Your Misery

This sounds like a setup for an “In Mother Russia…” joke, but it happened at the Igarka airport above the Arctic Circle. The flight to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk was in danger of being cancelled because the plane was frozen to the ground! Technicians said that the plane’s landing gear was greased with a lubricant that was not suitable for Arctic temperatures- and at 52 degrees below zero, that’s important. The airport’s tractor didn’t work, either, because its brake pads were frozen. What to do? The 70 or so passengers waiting for the flight were mostly oil field workers who wanted to go home, so they did what they had to do: they pushed the plane.