Freezing temperatures can make winter travel risky.

For 30 passengers and four crew members of a Polar Airlines An-24 flight in Russia, the  minus-39 degrees Celsius temperature was the least of their worry though when they arrived at their destination last 28 December.

The Soviet-era plane was to land at the Zyryanka Airport in the Yakutia region but missed it, reports said. Instead, the small plane landed in the frozen Kolyma river.

No one was hurt in the mishap, and the plane was not damaged. The airline issued a statement admitting that the plane landed outside the airport runway.

"According to preliminary information, the cause of the aviation incident was an error by the crew in piloting the aircraft," a spokesperson for the Eastern Siberian transport prosecutor said in a statement, according to CNN.

Meanwhile, another plane "passenger" almost froze to death during an Air Algerie flight from Oran, Algeria to Paris, France.

Plane technical inspectors at Orly Airport were doing their routine check when they found the unidentified man in his 20s suffering from severe hypothermia and had to be rushed to the hospital.

The stowaway was exposed to minus-50 degrees temperature after he hid in the plane's landing gear hold in its underbelly.

The man survived, surprising people as there was no oxygen at his spot on the plane while it was flying at 30,000 feet.