Siberian plane in emergency landing in China

The Ikar Airlines  Boeing-767-300 was on a charter flight with 231 passengers, including 28 children, when it requested the emergency landing at the Chinese airport of Haikou. Passengers were accommodated in a nearby hotel as airline staff worked to repair the aircraft.

'The Chinese airport does not have specialists who know this type of airliner, therefore, the air company is mulling two variants - to send a repairman from Beijing to Haikou or Ikar technical specialists from Bangkok, but this will require a visa for them,' reported Itar-Tass.

Gennady Chuprov, an airline official, said: 'We will choose a quicker variant.'

Passengers of the same airline faced a similar hold-up on 4 June when a Yekaterinburg to Vietnam flight took off with a delay of 18 hours over the failure of the air motor starter.

Russian Ikar Airlines was founded in 2013. The airline makes charter flights from Siberian cities to resorts. Its main hub is the Krasnoyarsk airport of Yemelyanovo. The air fleet consists of eight medium- and long-haul airliners Boeing 757-200 and 767-300 aged from 14 to 19 years.