Plane won't start, passengers get out and give it a push

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Roping in passengers to give your car a push is a well-known tactic for battling ice, but rarely employed when it comes to passenger jets.

But this is exactly what happened when an airliner's take-off and landing gear seized up as it tried to taxi onto a runway at Krasnoyarsk Territory airfield, with passengers helping the airport's tug-truck roll the plane out of trouble.

Most seemed quite amused by the situation and were happy to help out, grabbing a wing and giving it a good, hard push.

"In air temperatures as low as 52 degrees below zero Celsius its braking system got jammed," said Oksana Gorbunova, senior assistant to West Siberia’s transport prosecutor. "The tug-truck failed to get the plane moving so friendly passengers agreed to help and they soon safely left for home."

The Katekavia charter flight was taking oil industry workers to Krasnoyark's Yemelyanovo airport, when the plunging temperatures threated to leave all 74 passengers stranded.

Videos of the incident were posted online, with Tass.ru reporting that in one a passenger can be heard saying that "several things make a real man’s life worth living: Writing a book, planting a tree, or at least bracing one’s muscles to help an immobilised passenger plane take to the skies."