LOT flight 165
| LOT flight 165 | |
|---|---|
 The scene of the accident on the Polica |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | CFIT after a navigation error |
| place | Skawica, municipality of Zawoja Coordinates: 49 ° 37 ′ 59.9 ″ N , 19 ° 37 ′ 59.9 ″ E |
| date | 2nd April 1969 |
| Fatalities | 53 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Antonov An-24B |
| operator | LOT |
| Mark | SP-LTF |
| Departure airport | Warsaw-Okęcie |
| Destination airport | Krakow-Balice |
| Passengers | 48 |
| crew | 5 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
On April 2, 1969, on the flight 165 of the Polish airline Polskie Linie Lotnicze LOT , the fully occupied Antonov An-24B crashed off the flight route on the slope of Mount Polica in the Zawoja district in the Western Carpathians , after the crew for a reason that was not conclusively clarified missed the destination airport by approx. 50 km. All 53 people on board were killed.
Flight and airplane
The domestic flight from Warsaw Okecie to Krakow was flown 67302406 LOT with the Antonov An-24B serial number, which since delivery in 1966 mark was SP-LTF.
The aircraft, with 48 passengers and a crew of five (including captain Czesław Doliński, copilot Janusz Grzeszczyk, flight engineer Tadeusz Kasiński and two flight attendants) took off from Warsaw at 3:20 p.m. ( CET ) and took a south course. Arrival at Krakow Airport, about 250 km away, was planned for 4:15 p.m. at the latest. This had only recently been opened for commercial flights at the end of 1968. On the flight route, two non-directional radio beacons in Przysucha (identification TMS) and in Jędrzejów (JED) were to be flown over and reported to air traffic control in Warsaw and Krakow accordingly.
the accident
At 3:39 p.m. the copilot reported that the position had been reached via Przysucha as planned. However, the expected response about the overflight of Jędrzejów (JED) ten minutes later did not materialize, so that the airport tower in Krakow called air traffic control in Warsaw at 3:53 p.m. to clarify the matter. Nobody could be reached there except for the receptionist, who acknowledged the conversation with “everything is okay”, but shortly after the phone call informed the air traffic controllers in Warsaw about the missing message. A minute later, Captain Doliński responded to the triplicate question from the Warsaw air traffic controllers, who were worried by the call, with the message that he wanted to reach JED in one minute. At 3:56 p.m. Doliński reported to Warsaw that he had already reached JED at 3:49 p.m. Shortly afterwards he corrected his time to 3:53 p.m., which, however, was just as implausible compared to the previous radio contact.
The sky over Krakow was clear, but overcast over the airport to the west of the city. At 3:57 p.m., the crew made radio contact with Krakow and stated that they wanted to reach the outside radio beacon at Balice Airport in two to three minutes. However, since after the assumed time neither the urban development was visible to the crew nor the machine appeared on the air traffic control radar of the airport, the Krakow air traffic controllers switched on a newly built, more powerful DECCA 424 radar device imported from Great Britain . From then on, they were able to observe a radar echo that they took to be the Antonov.
The crew, on the other hand, was still unable to locate the city or target the outside radio beacon of the airport and therefore followed the instructions of the air traffic controllers. At 16:08 she was instructed to change course and reduce the altitude to 600 m. Radio contact with the aircraft then broke off.
Shortly afterwards, a plane crash was reported to the citizens' militia in the village of Zawoja, about 50 km south-southwest, which, after consulting air traffic control, was identified as Flight 165. The plane broke into several fragments in a densely forested area on the northern slope of Mount Polica (1,369 above sea level). Due to a winter thunderstorm, the first rescuers and militia officers could not reach the crash site until around 8 p.m. The next morning, welders from the repair shop in Sucha Beskidzka were called to help free the parts of the machine that were trapped between the trees .
Victim
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Inmates died on impact or immediately afterwards. In addition to the five crew members, 48 passengers were carried, including two LOT employees (an active and a former pilot) who were taken along as surplus passengers without an entry in the passenger list. Therefore, the press agency initially spoke of 51 fatalities, on April 4, the list was then supplemented by the two LOT employees.
Some prominent personalities were among the passengers:
- Zenon Klemensiewicz, linguist
- Stanisław Lewiński, son of the incumbent Transport Minister Piotr Lewiński
- Antoni Naumczyk , Polish Catholic clergyman and theologian (as well as his wife and two children)
- Stanisław Tkaczow, politician, former Minister of Forestry and President of the Polish Association of Hunters.
In addition to the Polish citizens, two US, two English and one Italian citizens were among the victims.
Cause of accident
The accident was initially commented on with a laconic press release. As a result, the anti-communist radio station Radio Free Europe (RFE) circulated several conspiracy theories to discredit the government. At the same time, there was pressure from the Ministry of Transport to clarify exactly what caused the accident.
Since the flight data recorder was not adequately protected and was destroyed in the impact and fire, and since the Antonov was not equipped with a voice recorder, the investigations were primarily based on the tape recordings of the tower in Krakow. These were unsynchronized, i.e. H. recorded without timestamp .
The investigators came to the conclusion that both the crew and the Krakow air traffic controllers were to blame for the accident. According to the presumptions of the investigative committee, the crew followed the custom of the LOT pilots at the time to fly exclusively by sight on short-haul flights and disregarded the radio beacons, but reported the position to the controllers for the sake of form. So it happened that she missed the famous landmarks because of the occasional overcast sky . In addition, apart from the flight captain, the crew had little experience; however, he was possibly in poor physical condition due to a heart attack that had survived some time before .
The British ground radar, activated by the air traffic controllers, had been set up, but had not yet been certified by the manufacturer, as there were considerable doubts about its correct functioning in the hilly terrain around Krakow. The position of the machine assumed by the air traffic controllers was a false indication of the radar. After the crew of the Antonov had lost their orientation due to a lack of earth visibility , they blindly trusted the incorrect instructions of the air traffic controllers, which resulted in the collision with the mountain.
The public prosecutor's office initially brought an action against two air traffic controllers, but withdrew them in 1970 because of the suspended sentence and the amnesty that had occurred in the meantime .
The thesis put forward by the RFE of an unsuccessful escape from Poland (towards Vienna ) was largely refuted. The pilots regularly took part in international flights, which would have resulted in a better escape route. The lack of motivation (most of them would have been allowed to travel abroad to Western Europe anyway) and the lack of information on the radio also spoke against hijacking the aircraft by passengers.
It was not possible to determine whether a technical defect in the aircraft had contributed to the accident, which was also assumed by RFE.
Commemoration
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In 2003, a cross and a memorial plaque were set up at the scene of the accident, which was intended to remind of the partisan activities in this area during the German occupation and of the pontificate of John Paul II . In 2005 there was a plaque listing all the victims, and in 2009 another monument in the form of a wing was erected into which the plaque was integrated.
Today the name of the nature reserve in which the crash site is located is reminiscent of the failed linguist Zenon Klemensiewicz .
In terms of the number of fatalities (53), the accident was the most serious aircraft accident in Poland to date. To date, it is the fourth most serious accident in the history of Polish aviation and the third most serious aircraft accident on Polish soil. It was only surpassed by the accidents on LOT flights LO 007 (in 1980, 87 victims) and LO 5055 (1987, 183 victims) and the plane crash near Smolensk (2010, 96 victims, on Russian territory).
swell
- Accident report An-24 SP-LTF , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on July 31, 2019.
- Przemysław Semczuk: Katastrofy PRL: Katastrofa An-24 pod Zawoją. In: Newsweek Polska . August 17, 2010, accessed April 18, 2013 (Polish).
- 53 Killed in Polish Air Crash. (No longer available online.) In: Ogden Standard Examiner. April 3, 1969, archived from the original on June 30, 2013 ; accessed on April 18, 2013 .
Footnotes
- ↑ a b W katastrofie samolotu PLL Lot zginęło 51 osób . Tragedia lotnicza koło Zawoi. In: Dziennik Polski . April 3, 1969, p. 1 (Polish, online [accessed April 19, 2013] Caution! Special browser plug-in required. Virus scanner could block this).
- ↑ 2013 no longer available as it has been shut down in the meantime.
- ↑ Jerzy Tomaszewski: Odszkodowania dla rodzin ofiar . Po tragedii lotniczej w Zawoi. In: Dziennik Polski . April 4, 1969, p. 1, 4 (Polish, online [accessed April 19, 2013] Caution! Special browser plug-in required. Virus scanner could block this).
- ↑ Richard Andrews from Forest Hills , NY and Jean Irwin from Los Angeles , CA.