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Brrrrr-ave passengers help push Russian icebound plane onto runway

It was a balmy 47 degrees below zero at a runway 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

By Mary Papenfuss
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IGARKO, Russia, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Now that's pitching in. Dozens of Russian passengers climbed out of their aircraft to help push their icebound plane onto the runway in a town about 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

The temperature was - 47 degrees.

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Some of the 74 passengers and seven crew members from a Katekavia charter operated by UTAir airlines from Igarka to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk were videotaped pushing the wings of a Tupolev-134 jet, apparently helping the plane reverse toward a runway.

Why did they need to be called into service? The braking system on the landing gear had frozen, and a truck that was supposed to push the plane stalled, according to a statement from the West Siberia Transportation prosecutor.

"Passengers got off the plane and began to push it onto the taxiway," noted the statement, which added that prosecutors "will assess the legality of the actions of all those involved."

But a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office said that the video was "more of a joke" because passengers could barely reach the wings to push the plane. When the passengers were asked to disembark while the plane was about to be moved, some of them "left the bus and approached the plane trying to assist with the use of physical force," Oksana Gorbunova told the Tass news agency.

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Apparently, budging a 70-ton aircraft by hand is even harder than it looks.

The plane took off without incident and arrived at its destination two hours later.

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