Korean Air Lines Flight 902

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Korean Air Lines Flight 902
Korean Air Lines Boeing 707 Fitzgerald.jpg

An identical Boeing 707 from the company
Accident summary
Accident type Missile attack
place near Louchi , Russia
date April 20, 1978
Fatalities 2
Survivors 107
Injured 13
Aircraft
Aircraft type Boeing 707
operator Korean Air Lines
Mark HL7429
Departure airport Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport , France
Destination airport Gimpo Airport , Seoul , South Korea
Passengers 97
crew 12
Lists of aviation accidents

Korean Air Lines 902 was the flight of a civil Boeing 707 of the South Korean airline Korean Air Lines , which was shot at by Soviet interceptors for violating the airspace on April 20, 1978 and forced to make an emergency landing near the town of Louchi in northern Karelia . Two passengers were killed in the fire.

Flight history

The Boeing 707 with the air vehicle registration HL7429 under the command of Captain Kim Chang Ky was on the French Paris-Charles de Gaulle started and should after a stopover at Anchorage International Airport in Alaska to Seoul , Korea, flying. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean and Greenland , the crew routinely corrected the course around 640 kilometers from the North Pole . However, she used a grossly incorrect value for the magnetic declination when converting the compass display. The aircraft was not equipped with an inertial navigation system.

The machine turned about 135-140 ° to the right and thus from NNW to about southeast. The pilots did not pay attention to the grossly wrong direction of flight and also not to the resulting “wrong position” of the sun. The Boeing 707 flew over or close to Svalbard and the North Cape and finally entered Soviet airspace near Murmansk .

Su-15 Flagon interceptors
US Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft

emergency landing

According to Soviet information, the crew repeatedly refused to follow the interceptors. According to the captain's statement, however, he reduced the speed, extended the landing gear and switched on the landing lights to signal this. The air traffic control in Finnish Rovaniemi recorded on more than one call of the captain on the international emergency frequency, but were not answered.

American sources say one of the fighter pilots tried for several minutes to convince his superiors that it was a civilian plane and not US Air Force variant -135 RC Boeing acted for electronic reconnaissance, but was ordered to shoot down. He then fired two air-to-air missiles of the type R-60 off. One of them missed the target, while the other hit the left wing of the aircraft, tearing off three meters of the wing and causing an engine to fail. Splinters from the warhead penetrated the hull, killing two passengers and causing a sudden drop in pressure in the cabin .

Representation of the flight path of the Boeing 707 with the correct route in blue and the deviating course in red

The crew initiated an emergency descent from 35,000 feet (10,670 meters ) to 5000 feet (1520 meters). The interceptors lost their target in the clouds. The pilots of the Boeing 707 searched for a suitable place for an emergency landing for around 40 minutes , before the machine after several unsuccessful attempts at dusk on the approximately 4 km long frozen Korpijarwisee ( 66 ° 2 ′ 45 ″  N , 33 ° 1 ′ 30 ″  O ) landed about 3 km south of the village of Louchi and lay on his stomach at the edge of the forest on the lake shore. There it was only found by Soviet forces following a tip from local residents. The 107 survivors were rescued by helicopter.

Aftermath

The Boeing 707 passengers were released after two days by the Soviet authorities while the crew were detained for further investigation. She was only released after she made a formal apology and stated that she had deliberately not obeyed the interceptor's orders. The aircraft's flight recorders and logbooks were confiscated and not made available for an international investigation.

The fact that the interceptors had lost their target and landed unnoticed on Soviet soil after a long flight resulted in measures being taken against several responsible parties, possibly in one case a shooting for failure to perform, and led to a reorganization of the Soviet air defense. A resulting determination not to allow the incident to happen again may have contributed to the downing of Korean Air Lines flight 007 five years later off Sakhalin Island , which took place under very similar circumstances.

See also

Web links

Commons : Korean Air Lines Flight 902  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Note also to get sufficient partial pressure of oxygen into the cabin for human breathing.
  2. ↑ The Great Disasters: Eight historical reports on events that shook the world . Verlag GEO Epoche, Hamburg, 2014 ISBN 978-3-652-00161-8 .

Coordinates: 66 ° 2 ′ 53.6 "  N , 33 ° 4 ′ 19.3"  E