Air Niugini Dash 8-200 involved in incident in Russia - 20th Dec
Incident: Niugini DH8B near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Dec 20th 2020, technical malfunction
An Air Niugini de Havilland Dash 8-200 in completely white paint scheme with no company logo, registration P2-PXI performing a positioning flight from Sapporo (Japan) to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (Russia), was enroute at FL270 about 80nm northeast of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (Russia) when the crew requested to divert to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk reporting technical problems. The aircraft landed safely on Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk's runway 19 about 25 minutes later.
Russian media report the aircraft is kept under guard, the two pilots, only occupants, were taken to a hotel.
Air Niugini sold P2-PXI to Canada, the aircraft was on the positioning flights to Canada. The aircraft had not been flown about 15 months prior to starting the positioning flights from Papua New Guinea to Canada on Dec 18th 2020.