LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055
Encyclopedia
LOT Polish Airlines
Flight 5055 crashed in the Kabaty
Woods nature reserve
on the outskirts of Warsaw
on May 9, 1987. The aircraft was an Ilyushin Il-62
M bearing the name Tadeusz Kościuszko
. (Two different Polish Il-62s bore that name; one was Il-62 SP-LAB (cn 21105), the second plane of this type purchased by LOT in 1971; the other, which crashed, was an Il-62M purchased in 1984.)
, LOT Polish Airlines started replacing their Ilyushin Il-62s with the more modernized version, Ilyushin Il-62Ms. These had newer engines (Soloviev D-30
instead of Kuznetsov NK-8
), but both of these turbofan engines shared the same critical point - low pressure turbine and engine shaft design and construction.
According to the Polish investigatory commission, the cause of the crash was the disintegration of an engine shaft due to faulty bearings
inside the number 2 engine, which seized, causing extensive heat. This in turn caused the consequent damage to engine number 1 (and its fire), rapid decompression of the hull, a fire in the cargo hold (which was not detected due to a damaged fire alarm system sensor), as well as the loss of elevator controls and progressive electrical failure.
The bearings concerned were roller bearings
; each was designed to have 26 rollers inside, but because the supply of the rollers to the factory was delayed - while the bearings had to be finished on time due to expiring contracts - each bearing had only 13 rollers.
took off from runway 33 at Okecie Airport at 10:18 am. The pilot
s were cleared to climb to 31000 feet (9,448.8 m) with a course set to Grudziadz VOR
, which was reached at 26500 feet (8,077.2 m).
The Captain
was Zygmunt Pawlaczyk, 59, with 19745 hours in the air (5542 on Ilyushin-62s, and a captain from 11 May 1978). The first officer was Leopold Karcher, the flight engineer
was Wojciech Kłossek, flight navigator
was Lesław Łykowski, radio operator was Leszek Bogdan and Ryszard Chmielewski an instructor of flight engineers on a routine observation of the progress of Wojciech Kłossek. By a twist of fate, Chmielewski was scheduled as a flight engineer on LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007
seven years earlier, but he switched shifts with his colleague.
The purser
was Maria Berger-Sanderska; other flight attendants were: Hanna Chęcińska (who was in the technical cabin-bay, next to the engines, and probably — after decompression — lost consciousness and burned in the fire or was sucked out of the plane; her body was never found despite extensive search), Małgorzata Ostrowska, Beata Płonka and Jolanta Potyra.
to climb to an altitude 6000 m (18000 ft) as quickly as possible:
10:26 Flight 5055: Well, we go to New York, possibly we'll be able to get to flight level 180... (tongue-in-cheek)
10:26 Okęcie ATC: Gentlemen! You won't make it. You have about 5 kilometers to the TMN [Tango-Mike-November route]. I told you that clearance was set for 180 or higher. Military planes are training there, I have no communication with them to allow separation.
10:26 Flight 5055: Roger that. Roger that.
10:31:35 Okęcie: 5055, heading 310, immediately cut flight level 170.
10:31:39 Flight 5055: 5055, heading 310.
10:31:41 Okęcie: Climb immediately. I mean it, immediately.
At the moment, the crew applied maximum thrust on the engines to climb to 6000m. Supposedly, had they not applied thrust, the turbine disc in the inner left engine would have survived the entire flight. However, nine minutes after the thrust was applied, the faulty bearings inside the engine overheated enough to cause an explosion (about 1000 °C.).
An engine
exploded and started burning at 10.41 a.m., when the plane
had just passed Lipinki village, near Warlubie
(near Grudziądz
, at 8,200 m and 810 km/h). The overheated bearings exploded, destroying the shaft; the turbine
disc on the burning engine separated from the destroyed shaft; the freed disc spun to an enormous speed and, within seconds, explosively disintegrated, destroying engine two. Debris from the explosion violently spread around (with an estimated speed of 160 m/s), puncturing the hull, severing flight controls and electrical cables and causing damage to engine one - outer left one, which soon started also to burn. A piece of burning debris burst into cargo hold number 4 and caused a rapidly spreading fire; the inner left engine burned rapidly until impact.
Immediately, the crew noticed that the elevator control systems had failed — only vertical trim remained operative – and that two engines were disabled. The reasons for this were unknown to the crew; they initially suspected that the plane could have been hit by something. The pilots started an emergency descent to 13200 ft (4,023.4 m). The closest airport where Il-62 might land was Gdańsk
, but landing there was not possible because the crew could not dump enough fuel for the emergency landing attempt (takeoff weight of the plane on that day was 167 tons, until 10:41 approximately 6 tons of fuel were consumed; the maximum landing weight of Il-62M was 107 tons) so they turned their heading to Warsaw instead. Due to the damaged electrical system, the crew had problems with fuel
dumping and they didn't realize that the fire had spread to the cargo holds in the back of the plane (cargo hold 4 and 6, and in final minutes probably reached into passenger cabin).
Initially, the crew intended to land at the military airport
in Modlin, but at the final moment they decided to continue the flight to Okecie, where there was better fire and medical equipment. It was unclear at the time why the crew decided to continue the flight to Warsaw, given the rapidly spreading fire and lost flight controls, rather than land as quickly as possible at Modlin, where the fire and medical equipment was worse than Okęcie, but still good enough to deal with an emergency landing of an airliner with in-flight fire. Many at the time believed officials had decided the airliner must not land at a military airport and (contrary to official reports) denied the crew's request to land at Modlin. While this is somewhat plausible, no conclusive evidence supporting this theory was ever presented. The most probable hypothesis is that due to damage to the electrical systems, both the fire detector in the cargo hold and inside the engine did not work properly (on the CVR, an engine fire sound indicator was heard shortly after the explosion, but it later faded out; the signal reappeared less than four minutes before the crash and continued until impact) and so Cpt. Pawlaczyk did not know about the magnitude of the fire in the hold and how quickly it was spreading, nor about the burning engine when he decided to fly to Warsaw.
About 10:53, an explosion in the cargo hold occurred; the reasons are unknown. It is supposed that some of the fuel tanks were damaged and fuel vapors drifted into burning cargo hold, causing an explosion.
The passengers were fully aware of the emergency; one of the passengers managed to write on the opening page of her copy of the New Testament
: 9.05.1987 The plane's damaged... God, what will happen now... Halina Domeracka, R. Tagore
St., Warsaw...
CVR fragment - the moment of engine explosion
10.41.28
Intermittent acoustic signal of autopilot disengage
10.41.30
Crew: Hey! Pressurization!
10.41.32
Acoustic ringing signal of cabin decompression
10.41.34
Crew: Is there a fire? What's going on?
10.41.35
Crew: Probably a fire.
10.41.37
Crew: Engine? Shut it down!
10.41.39
Crew: ...shut down. That first one is burning!
10.41.42
Crew: ...fire...
10.41.44
Crew: ...all small [referring to engines' throttles]
10.41.45
Crew: Warsaw?
10.41.46
Crew: ...all small. Decompression.
10.41.48
Crew: Two engines are gone!
10.41.49
Continuous acoustic signal of engine fire.
10.41.50
Crew: Two engines are gone!
Crew: Shut down...
Crew: We're turning around! Fire!
10.41.55
Crew: Danger!!! Warsaw radar LOT! Warsaw radar! [calling flight control]
A very straight turn
to the left was started at 11.09 at 4900 ft (1,493.5 m) with an airspeed
of 480 km/h. At the moment, as plane passed the village of Józefosław, approximately 10 kilometers from the airport, several burnt-out elements of the plane's hull fell out, starting local fires on the ground. Supposedly, at this moment the fire destroyed the vertical trim controls. When the aircraft
passed the town of Piaseczno
, it went into sinusoid-shaped flight
for the final seconds and nose-dived with a slight 11 degrees left bank and 12 degree pitch downwards, crashing into the ground at 480 km/h (300 mph) and exploding into pieces in the forest 5700 meters from Warsaw airport runway. (As the nose dive started very shortly before the crash, one hypothesis states that in the final moments, fire from the cargo hold spread into the rear part of passenger cabin, causing mass hysteria; the passengers moved towards the nose of the plane, away from fire, destabilizing the plane and causing the dive. Another theory is that rapidly spreading fire misshaped the hull in its rear part, which - combined with strong forces acting on the empennage
- altered the plane's angle of attack
and contributed to the rapid dive.) The remains of the plane were scattered over a rectangular area, approx. 370 by 50 meters.
The last words recorded by the flight recorder
inside the cockpit
at 11:12:13 were: "Dobranoc! Do widzenia! Cześć, giniemy!" (eng.
Good night! Goodbye! Bye, we're dying!). All 172 passengers (including 1 infant; 17 were from the United States) and 11 crew died.
Okęcie Tower: From your current position you have about 15 kilometers to the runway.
Crew: Understood.
Crew: ...[turn] to the left! Engines to the left!
11.10.13 am
Tower: 5055, to the left, to the left zero-five-zero.
Crew: OK.
11.10.40 am
Tower: 5055, to the left, course 360.
Crew: We want to turn. That's just what we want. [implied meaning: "we're trying"]
Tower: Keep turning, turn to three-six-zero. Now you have about 12 kilometers to the runway.
Crew: OK.
11.11.02 am
Tower: 5055, to the left, course 330.
Crew: We are turning to the left.
Tower: Start final approach about 11 kilometers from the runway.
Crew: We will do all we can.
Tower: Understood.
Tower: [Turn] to the left, course 320.
Crew: Understood.
11.11.34 am
Tower: You've come to the right hand side of the runway centreline, continue left, course 300.
Tower: Wind is 290 degrees, 22 kilometers per hour. You are cleared for runway three-three.
Crew: OK.
11.12.10 am
The transmitter was turned on four times. Fragments of unintelligible utterances.
11.12.13 am
Bye! We're dying!!!
The day was warm and sunny, so many people rested in the vicinity of Kabaty Woods; after the crash many of them headed for the site. According to official reports, the site was quickly closed to the public, and no plundering of remains was officially registered. However, some unofficial reports about stealing money and valuable items surfaced later; Halina Domeracka's personal belongings, including her passport
, New Testament
, photos and glasses were recovered intact from the site, yet 400 U.S. dollars and 10000 Polish zloty
s were missing.
Because some burning pieces of hull fell out, several local fires were initiated on the ground, propagated by the dumped fuel; all of them were extinguished by 12:00. A total of 195 firemen from 44 different units participated.
All victims' bodies were dismembered in the crash; from a total of 183 bodies, 62 were never identified.
The first TV and radio news about the crash initially reported that the crashed plane was Il-62M SP-LBD (cn 1138234) "Gen.
Władysław Sikorski".
All crew members received posthumously high military and civil decorations: Cpt. Pawlaczyk was given the Officers' Cross of Polonia Restituta
, other flight crew members received Knights' Cross of the same order, and the flight attendants received the Golden Cross Of Merit. The state funeral
of the crew was conducted on 23 May 1987 at the Northern Communal Cemetery in Warsaw. The graves of the crew of LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007
are located a few hundred meters away.
Two days of national mourning were announced after the crash. Many officials from the entire world, including Pope John Paul II
, expressed their condolences to the families of the victims.
The incident's cause was similar to that of LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007's crash seven years earlier. After the disaster of Flight 007, the Polish investigatory commission established that its engine shaft disintegration was the result of metal fatigue, improper alloy preparation resulting in a defective mechanism which was less resistant to fatigue, and a faulty design of the engine shaft. Detection of these faults was possible only after complete disassemblage of the engine and detailed analysis of all its elements, and as such was beyond capabilities of the ground servicing personnel. These concerns were addressed by the Polish Government's Special Disasters Commission in the 1980 inquiry, but the Soviet designers, engineers and scientists disagreed with these findings, stating that the turbine disintegration was the result of engine failure, not its cause.
After Flight 5055's demise, a similar report was sent to Moscow; initially, it was denied (partially because the Soviet engineers and politicians still held a grudge against Poles because LOT Polish Airlines, after purchasing Il-62s in the 1970s, replaced their radionavigational equipment with separately brought and more modern American equipment; it was at the time considered very inappropriate for political reasons), and the Soviet engineers even made their own report, concluding that all damage to the engines were the consequence of the crash, which was caused by pilot error. However, despite pressure and threats from Soviets, the Polish commission stood by their findings; finally, Soviet engineers and politicians reluctantly accepted responsibility. Soon after the crash, LOT Polish Airlines, still being unable to purchase other planes than Soviet ones, implemented several improvements in Il-62's construction:
After the Revolutions of 1989
, LOT Polish Airlines started purchasing Boeing 767
s for their transatlantic destinations. The last Polish Il-62 was sold to Ukraine
in late 1991.
After the crash, the place where the plane
came down and exploded was — during three months of cleanup — ploughed and sown with new tree
s. As of 2009, the long mark in the forest
is still perfectly visible from the sky.
On the north edge of that mark is a monument
- high, black Christian cross
and a black stone with engraved names of 183 victims of that crash. In Ursynów
district there is a Zygmunt Pawlaczyk street, and through Kabaty Forest run a Grove of "Kościuszko" Plane Crew.
Symbolic grave
s of the crew members lie in Powązki Military Cemetery
, and a collective grave of unidentified victims lies in Wólka Węglowa Cemetery - the place where the victims were identified. Some identified victims were also buried there; others were buried in their hometowns.
The transatlantic route from Warsaw to destinations in the USA has not changed since 1987.
LOT Polish Airlines
Polskie Linie Lotnicze LOT S.A. , trading as LOT Polish Airlines, is the flag carrier of Poland. Based in Warsaw, LOT was established in 1929, making it one of the world's oldest airlines still in operation. Using a fleet of 55 aircraft, LOT operates a complex network to 60 destinations in Europe,...
Flight 5055 crashed in the Kabaty
Kabaty
Kabaty is the southernmost neighborhood of the city of Warsaw, located in its Ursynów district. Until the late 1980s it was a small village located south of Warsaw, between Warsaw and the Kabaty Woods...
Woods nature reserve
Nature reserve
A nature reserve is a protected area of importance for wildlife, flora, fauna or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research...
on the outskirts of Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
on May 9, 1987. The aircraft was an Ilyushin Il-62
Ilyushin Il-62
The Ilyushin Il-62 is a Soviet long-range jet airliner conceived in 1960 by Ilyushin. As successor to the popular turbo-prop Il-18 and with capacity for almost 200 passengers, the Il-62 was the largest jet airliner when it first flew in 1963. It entered Aeroflot service on 15 September 1967 with...
M bearing the name Tadeusz Kościuszko
Tadeusz Kosciuszko
Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko was a Polish–Lithuanian and American general and military leader during the Kościuszko Uprising. He is a national hero of Poland, Lithuania, the United States and Belarus...
. (Two different Polish Il-62s bore that name; one was Il-62 SP-LAB (cn 21105), the second plane of this type purchased by LOT in 1971; the other, which crashed, was an Il-62M purchased in 1984.)
Cause
After the crash of Il-62 SP-LAA on LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007
LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007 crashed near Okęcie Airport in Warsaw, Poland, on 14 March 1980, due to mechanical failure as the crew aborted a landing and attempted to go-around. All 87 crew and passengers died.- The aircraft :...
, LOT Polish Airlines started replacing their Ilyushin Il-62s with the more modernized version, Ilyushin Il-62Ms. These had newer engines (Soloviev D-30
Soloviev D-30
- External links :* * * *...
instead of Kuznetsov NK-8
Kuznetsov NK-8
The NK-8 was a low-bypass turbofan engine built by the Kuznetsov Design Bureau, in the 20,000 lbf thrust class. It powered production models of the Ilyushin Il-62 and the Tupolev Tu-154A and B models.-External links: - NK-8...
), but both of these turbofan engines shared the same critical point - low pressure turbine and engine shaft design and construction.
Bearing (mechanical)
A bearing is a device to allow constrained relative motion between two or more parts, typically rotation or linear movement. Bearings may be classified broadly according to the motions they allow and according to their principle of operation as well as by the directions of applied loads they can...
inside the number 2 engine, which seized, causing extensive heat. This in turn caused the consequent damage to engine number 1 (and its fire), rapid decompression of the hull, a fire in the cargo hold (which was not detected due to a damaged fire alarm system sensor), as well as the loss of elevator controls and progressive electrical failure.
The bearings concerned were roller bearings
Rolling-element bearing
A rolling-element bearing, also known as a rolling bearing, is a bearing which carries a load by placing round elements between the two pieces...
; each was designed to have 26 rollers inside, but because the supply of the rollers to the factory was delayed - while the bearings had to be finished on time due to expiring contracts - each bearing had only 13 rollers.
Flight and crew
The chartered plane to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
took off from runway 33 at Okecie Airport at 10:18 am. The pilot
Aviator
An aviator is a person who flies an aircraft. The first recorded use of the term was in 1887, as a variation of 'aviation', from the Latin avis , coined in 1863 by G. de la Landelle in Aviation Ou Navigation Aérienne...
s were cleared to climb to 31000 feet (9,448.8 m) with a course set to Grudziadz VOR
VHF omnidirectional range
VOR, short for VHF omnidirectional radio range, is a type of radio navigation system for aircraft. A VOR ground station broadcasts a VHF radio composite signal including the station's identifier, voice , and navigation signal. The identifier is typically a two- or three-letter string in Morse code...
, which was reached at 26500 feet (8,077.2 m).
The Captain
Pilot in command
The pilot in command of an aircraft is the person aboard the aircraft who is ultimately responsible for its operation and safety during flight. This would be the "captain" in a typical two- or three-pilot flight crew, or "pilot" if there is only one certified and qualified pilot at the controls of...
was Zygmunt Pawlaczyk, 59, with 19745 hours in the air (5542 on Ilyushin-62s, and a captain from 11 May 1978). The first officer was Leopold Karcher, the flight engineer
Flight engineer
Flight engineers work in three types of aircraft: fixed-wing , rotary wing , and space flight .As airplanes became even larger requiring more engines and complex systems to operate, the workload on the two pilots became excessive during certain critical parts of the flight regime, notably takeoffs...
was Wojciech Kłossek, flight navigator
Navigator
A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation. The navigator's primary responsibility is to be aware of ship or aircraft position at all times. Responsibilities include planning the journey, advising the Captain or aircraft Commander of estimated timing to...
was Lesław Łykowski, radio operator was Leszek Bogdan and Ryszard Chmielewski an instructor of flight engineers on a routine observation of the progress of Wojciech Kłossek. By a twist of fate, Chmielewski was scheduled as a flight engineer on LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007
LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007
LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007 crashed near Okęcie Airport in Warsaw, Poland, on 14 March 1980, due to mechanical failure as the crew aborted a landing and attempted to go-around. All 87 crew and passengers died.- The aircraft :...
seven years earlier, but he switched shifts with his colleague.
The purser
Purser
The purser joined the warrant officer ranks of the Royal Navy in the early fourteenth century and existed as a Naval rank until 1852. The development of the warrant officer system began in 1040 when five English ports began furnishing warships to King Edward the Confessor in exchange for certain...
was Maria Berger-Sanderska; other flight attendants were: Hanna Chęcińska (who was in the technical cabin-bay, next to the engines, and probably — after decompression — lost consciousness and burned in the fire or was sucked out of the plane; her body was never found despite extensive search), Małgorzata Ostrowska, Beata Płonka and Jolanta Potyra.
Emergency
Soon after Flight 5055 took off from Warsaw, the crew was instructed by the ATCAir traffic control
Air traffic control is a service provided by ground-based controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and in the air. The primary purpose of ATC systems worldwide is to separate aircraft to prevent collisions, to organize and expedite the flow of traffic, and to provide information and other...
to climb to an altitude 6000 m (18000 ft) as quickly as possible:
10:26 Flight 5055: Well, we go to New York, possibly we'll be able to get to flight level 180... (tongue-in-cheek)
10:26 Okęcie ATC: Gentlemen! You won't make it. You have about 5 kilometers to the TMN [Tango-Mike-November route]. I told you that clearance was set for 180 or higher. Military planes are training there, I have no communication with them to allow separation.
10:26 Flight 5055: Roger that. Roger that.
10:31:35 Okęcie: 5055, heading 310, immediately cut flight level 170.
10:31:39 Flight 5055: 5055, heading 310.
10:31:41 Okęcie: Climb immediately. I mean it, immediately.
At the moment, the crew applied maximum thrust on the engines to climb to 6000m. Supposedly, had they not applied thrust, the turbine disc in the inner left engine would have survived the entire flight. However, nine minutes after the thrust was applied, the faulty bearings inside the engine overheated enough to cause an explosion (about 1000 °C.).
An engine
Engine
An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert energy into useful mechanical motion. Heat engines, including internal combustion engines and external combustion engines burn a fuel to create heat which is then used to create motion...
exploded and started burning at 10.41 a.m., when the plane
Fixed-wing aircraft
A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft in which wings rotate about a fixed mast and ornithopters in which lift is generated by flapping wings.A powered...
had just passed Lipinki village, near Warlubie
Warlubie
Warlubie is a village in Świecie County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Warlubie. It lies approximately north-east of Świecie, north of Toruń, and north-east of Bydgoszcz.The village has a population of 2,100...
(near Grudziądz
Grudziadz
Grudziądz is a city in northern Poland on the Vistula River, with 96 042 inhabitants . Situated in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship , the city was previously in the Toruń Voivodeship .- History :-Early history:...
, at 8,200 m and 810 km/h). The overheated bearings exploded, destroying the shaft; the turbine
Turbine
A turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work.The simplest turbines have one moving part, a rotor assembly, which is a shaft or drum with blades attached. Moving fluid acts on the blades, or the blades react to the flow, so that they move and...
disc on the burning engine separated from the destroyed shaft; the freed disc spun to an enormous speed and, within seconds, explosively disintegrated, destroying engine two. Debris from the explosion violently spread around (with an estimated speed of 160 m/s), puncturing the hull, severing flight controls and electrical cables and causing damage to engine one - outer left one, which soon started also to burn. A piece of burning debris burst into cargo hold number 4 and caused a rapidly spreading fire; the inner left engine burned rapidly until impact.
Immediately, the crew noticed that the elevator control systems had failed — only vertical trim remained operative – and that two engines were disabled. The reasons for this were unknown to the crew; they initially suspected that the plane could have been hit by something. The pilots started an emergency descent to 13200 ft (4,023.4 m). The closest airport where Il-62 might land was Gdańsk
Gdansk Lech Walesa Airport
-Cargo airlines:Wizz Air is the largest airline at the airport. It has 3 Airbus 320 aircraft based there and they serve 21 routes. Ryanair has a large presence at the airport as well.-Public transport:The following city bus lines connect the airport:...
, but landing there was not possible because the crew could not dump enough fuel for the emergency landing attempt (takeoff weight of the plane on that day was 167 tons, until 10:41 approximately 6 tons of fuel were consumed; the maximum landing weight of Il-62M was 107 tons) so they turned their heading to Warsaw instead. Due to the damaged electrical system, the crew had problems with fuel
Fuel
Fuel is any material that stores energy that can later be extracted to perform mechanical work in a controlled manner. Most fuels used by humans undergo combustion, a redox reaction in which a combustible substance releases energy after it ignites and reacts with the oxygen in the air...
dumping and they didn't realize that the fire had spread to the cargo holds in the back of the plane (cargo hold 4 and 6, and in final minutes probably reached into passenger cabin).
Initially, the crew intended to land at the military airport
Modlin Airport
Modlin Airport is a disused military airfield, currently being converted into a passenger airport for low-cost carriers serving the Warsaw, Poland market. The airport is scheduled to open for passenger service prior to UEFA Euro 2012. On 8 February 2010, the airport was registered officially as...
in Modlin, but at the final moment they decided to continue the flight to Okecie, where there was better fire and medical equipment. It was unclear at the time why the crew decided to continue the flight to Warsaw, given the rapidly spreading fire and lost flight controls, rather than land as quickly as possible at Modlin, where the fire and medical equipment was worse than Okęcie, but still good enough to deal with an emergency landing of an airliner with in-flight fire. Many at the time believed officials had decided the airliner must not land at a military airport and (contrary to official reports) denied the crew's request to land at Modlin. While this is somewhat plausible, no conclusive evidence supporting this theory was ever presented. The most probable hypothesis is that due to damage to the electrical systems, both the fire detector in the cargo hold and inside the engine did not work properly (on the CVR, an engine fire sound indicator was heard shortly after the explosion, but it later faded out; the signal reappeared less than four minutes before the crash and continued until impact) and so Cpt. Pawlaczyk did not know about the magnitude of the fire in the hold and how quickly it was spreading, nor about the burning engine when he decided to fly to Warsaw.
About 10:53, an explosion in the cargo hold occurred; the reasons are unknown. It is supposed that some of the fuel tanks were damaged and fuel vapors drifted into burning cargo hold, causing an explosion.
The passengers were fully aware of the emergency; one of the passengers managed to write on the opening page of her copy of the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
: 9.05.1987 The plane's damaged... God, what will happen now... Halina Domeracka, R. Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
St., Warsaw...
CVR fragment - the moment of engine explosion
10.41.28
Intermittent acoustic signal of autopilot disengage
10.41.30
Crew: Hey! Pressurization!
10.41.32
Acoustic ringing signal of cabin decompression
10.41.34
Crew: Is there a fire? What's going on?
10.41.35
Crew: Probably a fire.
10.41.37
Crew: Engine? Shut it down!
10.41.39
Crew: ...shut down. That first one is burning!
10.41.42
Crew: ...fire...
10.41.44
Crew: ...all small [referring to engines' throttles]
10.41.45
Crew: Warsaw?
10.41.46
Crew: ...all small. Decompression.
10.41.48
Crew: Two engines are gone!
10.41.49
Continuous acoustic signal of engine fire.
10.41.50
Crew: Two engines are gone!
Crew: Shut down...
Crew: We're turning around! Fire!
10.41.55
Crew: Danger!!! Warsaw radar LOT! Warsaw radar! [calling flight control]
Crash
The crew tried to land at Okęcie from the south (due to strong wind) and turned the plane 180 degrees to runway 33 but a rapidly spreading in-flight fire, which spread to the exterior of the plane (plane was trailing a huge flame and dense black smoke), caused a total failure of surviving flight controls, the plane trim. Also, the gear lowering was not functioning. The emergency fuel dumping pumps were also malfunctioning; supposedly because of damaged electrical systems, sometimes they stopped functioning at all, only to resume dumping fuel minutes later. At the moment of the crash, approximately 32 tons of fuel were still in tanks.A very straight turn
Turn
Turn may refer to:In music:* Turn , a sequence of several notes next to each other in the scale* Turn , an Irish rock group* Turn LP, a 2005 rock album by Turn* Turn , a 2004 punk album by The Ex...
to the left was started at 11.09 at 4900 ft (1,493.5 m) with an airspeed
Airspeed
Airspeed is the speed of an aircraft relative to the air. Among the common conventions for qualifying airspeed are: indicated airspeed , calibrated airspeed , true airspeed , equivalent airspeed and density airspeed....
of 480 km/h. At the moment, as plane passed the village of Józefosław, approximately 10 kilometers from the airport, several burnt-out elements of the plane's hull fell out, starting local fires on the ground. Supposedly, at this moment the fire destroyed the vertical trim controls. When the aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...
passed the town of Piaseczno
Piaseczno
Piaseczno is a town in central Poland with 32,610 inhabitants .It is situated in the Masovian Voivodeship, approximately 16 kilometers south of Warsaw. It is a popular residential area and a suburb of Warsaw and is strongly linked to the capital, both economically and culturally...
, it went into sinusoid-shaped flight
Phugoid
A phugoid or fugoid is an aircraft motion where the vehicle pitches up and climbs, and then pitches down and descends, accompanied by speeding up and slowing down as it goes "uphill" and "downhill." This is one of the basic flight dynamics modes of an aircraft , and a classic example of a positive...
for the final seconds and nose-dived with a slight 11 degrees left bank and 12 degree pitch downwards, crashing into the ground at 480 km/h (300 mph) and exploding into pieces in the forest 5700 meters from Warsaw airport runway. (As the nose dive started very shortly before the crash, one hypothesis states that in the final moments, fire from the cargo hold spread into the rear part of passenger cabin, causing mass hysteria; the passengers moved towards the nose of the plane, away from fire, destabilizing the plane and causing the dive. Another theory is that rapidly spreading fire misshaped the hull in its rear part, which - combined with strong forces acting on the empennage
Empennage
The empennage , also known as the tail or tail assembly, of most aircraft gives stability to the aircraft, in a similar way to the feathers on an arrow...
- altered the plane's angle of attack
Angle of attack
Angle of attack is a term used in fluid dynamics to describe the angle between a reference line on a lifting body and the vector representing the relative motion between the lifting body and the fluid through which it is moving...
and contributed to the rapid dive.) The remains of the plane were scattered over a rectangular area, approx. 370 by 50 meters.
The last words recorded by the flight recorder
Flight recorder
A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of an aircraft accident or incident. For this reason, flight recorders are required to be capable of surviving the conditions likely to be encountered in a severe aircraft...
inside the cockpit
Cockpit
A cockpit or flight deck is the area, usually near the front of an aircraft, from which a pilot controls the aircraft. Most modern cockpits are enclosed, except on some small aircraft, and cockpits on large airliners are also physically separated from the cabin...
at 11:12:13 were: "Dobranoc! Do widzenia! Cześć, giniemy!" (eng.
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
Good night! Goodbye! Bye, we're dying!). All 172 passengers (including 1 infant; 17 were from the United States) and 11 crew died.
| Nationality | Passengers | Crew | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 155 | 11 | 166 | |
| 17 | 0 | 17 | |
| Total | 172 | 11 | 183 |
Last words
11.09.47 amOkęcie Tower: From your current position you have about 15 kilometers to the runway.
Crew: Understood.
Crew: ...[turn] to the left! Engines to the left!
11.10.13 am
Tower: 5055, to the left, to the left zero-five-zero.
Crew: OK.
11.10.40 am
Tower: 5055, to the left, course 360.
Crew: We want to turn. That's just what we want. [implied meaning: "we're trying"]
Tower: Keep turning, turn to three-six-zero. Now you have about 12 kilometers to the runway.
Crew: OK.
11.11.02 am
Tower: 5055, to the left, course 330.
Crew: We are turning to the left.
Tower: Start final approach about 11 kilometers from the runway.
Crew: We will do all we can.
Tower: Understood.
Tower: [Turn] to the left, course 320.
Crew: Understood.
11.11.34 am
Tower: You've come to the right hand side of the runway centreline, continue left, course 300.
Tower: Wind is 290 degrees, 22 kilometers per hour. You are cleared for runway three-three.
Crew: OK.
11.12.10 am
The transmitter was turned on four times. Fragments of unintelligible utterances.
11.12.13 am
Bye! We're dying!!!
Aftermath
The Okęcie Airport fire crew was aware of the emergency; when the plane crashed, they immediately drove towards the crash site, but they did not manage to reach it because the truck was too wide and could not pass between the trees.The day was warm and sunny, so many people rested in the vicinity of Kabaty Woods; after the crash many of them headed for the site. According to official reports, the site was quickly closed to the public, and no plundering of remains was officially registered. However, some unofficial reports about stealing money and valuable items surfaced later; Halina Domeracka's personal belongings, including her passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....
, New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
, photos and glasses were recovered intact from the site, yet 400 U.S. dollars and 10000 Polish zloty
Polish zloty
The złoty , which literally means "golden", is the currency of Poland. The modern złoty is subdivided into 100 groszy . The recognized English form of the word is zloty, plural zloty or zlotys...
s were missing.
Because some burning pieces of hull fell out, several local fires were initiated on the ground, propagated by the dumped fuel; all of them were extinguished by 12:00. A total of 195 firemen from 44 different units participated.
All victims' bodies were dismembered in the crash; from a total of 183 bodies, 62 were never identified.
The first TV and radio news about the crash initially reported that the crashed plane was Il-62M SP-LBD (cn 1138234) "Gen.
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
Władysław Sikorski".
All crew members received posthumously high military and civil decorations: Cpt. Pawlaczyk was given the Officers' Cross of Polonia Restituta
Polonia Restituta
The Order of Polonia Restituta is one of Poland's highest Orders. The Order can be conferred for outstanding achievements in the fields of education, science, sport, culture, art, economics, defense of the country, social work, civil service, or for furthering good relations between countries...
, other flight crew members received Knights' Cross of the same order, and the flight attendants received the Golden Cross Of Merit. The state funeral
State funeral
A state funeral is a public funeral ceremony, observing the strict rules of protocol, held to honor heads of state or other important people of national significance. State funerals usually include much pomp and ceremony as well as religious overtones and distinctive elements of military tradition...
of the crew was conducted on 23 May 1987 at the Northern Communal Cemetery in Warsaw. The graves of the crew of LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007
LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007
LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007 crashed near Okęcie Airport in Warsaw, Poland, on 14 March 1980, due to mechanical failure as the crew aborted a landing and attempted to go-around. All 87 crew and passengers died.- The aircraft :...
are located a few hundred meters away.
Two days of national mourning were announced after the crash. Many officials from the entire world, including Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
, expressed their condolences to the families of the victims.
The incident's cause was similar to that of LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007's crash seven years earlier. After the disaster of Flight 007, the Polish investigatory commission established that its engine shaft disintegration was the result of metal fatigue, improper alloy preparation resulting in a defective mechanism which was less resistant to fatigue, and a faulty design of the engine shaft. Detection of these faults was possible only after complete disassemblage of the engine and detailed analysis of all its elements, and as such was beyond capabilities of the ground servicing personnel. These concerns were addressed by the Polish Government's Special Disasters Commission in the 1980 inquiry, but the Soviet designers, engineers and scientists disagreed with these findings, stating that the turbine disintegration was the result of engine failure, not its cause.
After Flight 5055's demise, a similar report was sent to Moscow; initially, it was denied (partially because the Soviet engineers and politicians still held a grudge against Poles because LOT Polish Airlines, after purchasing Il-62s in the 1970s, replaced their radionavigational equipment with separately brought and more modern American equipment; it was at the time considered very inappropriate for political reasons), and the Soviet engineers even made their own report, concluding that all damage to the engines were the consequence of the crash, which was caused by pilot error. However, despite pressure and threats from Soviets, the Polish commission stood by their findings; finally, Soviet engineers and politicians reluctantly accepted responsibility. Soon after the crash, LOT Polish Airlines, still being unable to purchase other planes than Soviet ones, implemented several improvements in Il-62's construction:
- doubling the flight controls (an issue raised in the 1980 report, but never addressed by Soviet engineers)
- installing an advanced system of engine shaft vibration detectors in every engine
- installing more advanced smoke detectors in cargo holds (smoke detectors were found to be more reliable than the already used fire detectors) and advanced fire detectors in the engine nacelles
- replacing all flammable cargo holds' components with unflammable ones
- mandatory laboratory test of engine lubricating oil after every flight (the test, had it been conducted earlier, would have detected the damage to the bearings)
After the Revolutions of 1989
Revolutions of 1989
The Revolutions of 1989 were the revolutions which overthrew the communist regimes in various Central and Eastern European countries.The events began in Poland in 1989, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and...
, LOT Polish Airlines started purchasing Boeing 767
Boeing 767
The Boeing 767 is a mid-size, wide-body twin-engine jet airliner built by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. It was the manufacturer's first wide-body twinjet and its first airliner with a two-crew glass cockpit. The aircraft features two turbofan engines, a supercritical wing, and a conventional tail...
s for their transatlantic destinations. The last Polish Il-62 was sold to Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
in late 1991.
Today
Fixed-wing aircraft
A fixed-wing aircraft is an aircraft capable of flight using wings that generate lift due to the vehicle's forward airspeed. Fixed-wing aircraft are distinct from rotary-wing aircraft in which wings rotate about a fixed mast and ornithopters in which lift is generated by flapping wings.A powered...
came down and exploded was — during three months of cleanup — ploughed and sown with new tree
Tree
A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
s. As of 2009, the long mark in the forest
Forest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...
is still perfectly visible from the sky.
On the north edge of that mark is a monument
Monument
A monument is a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, or simply as an example of historic architecture...
- high, black Christian cross
Christian cross
The Christian cross, seen as a representation of the instrument of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, is the best-known religious symbol of Christianity...
and a black stone with engraved names of 183 victims of that crash. In Ursynów
Ursynów
Ursynów is the southernmost district of Warsaw. With a surface area of 44.6 km², it is the third largest district in Warsaw, comprising 8.6 percent of the city. The district has a population of almost 148,000, and is one of the fastest growing neighborhoods in Warsaw...
district there is a Zygmunt Pawlaczyk street, and through Kabaty Forest run a Grove of "Kościuszko" Plane Crew.
Symbolic grave
Grave (burial)
A grave is a location where a dead body is buried. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as graveyards or cemeteries....
s of the crew members lie in Powązki Military Cemetery
Powązki Military Cemetery
Powązki Military Cemetery is an old military cemetery located in the Wola district, western part of Warsaw, Poland. The cemetery is often confused with the older Powązki Cemetery, known colloquially as "Old Powązki"...
, and a collective grave of unidentified victims lies in Wólka Węglowa Cemetery - the place where the victims were identified. Some identified victims were also buried there; others were buried in their hometowns.
The transatlantic route from Warsaw to destinations in the USA has not changed since 1987.
See also
- LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007 crashed near Okęcie Airport in Warsaw, Poland, on 14 March 1980, due to mechanical failure as the crew aborted a landing and attempted to go-around. All 87 crew and passengers died.- The aircraft :...
- List of notable accidents and incidents on commercial aircraft
- List of Poland disasters by death toll