LOT flight 248

LOT flight 248
Investigations at the crash site
Accident summary
Accident type	Crash after stall (?)
place	Warsaw , Poland Coordinates: 52 ° 8 ′ 42 ″  N , 20 ° 59 ′ 5 ″  E
date	December 19, 1962
Fatalities	33
Survivors	0
Injured	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Vickers Viscount
operator	Polskie line Lotnicze LOT
Mark	SP-LVB
Departure airport	Brussels-Zaventem , Belgium
Stopover	Berlin-Schönefeld , German Democratic Republic
Destination airport	Warsaw-Okęcie , Poland
Passengers	28
crew	5
Lists of aviation accidents

LOT flight 248 was a scheduled flight of a Vickers Viscount of the Polish airline Polskie Linie Lotnicze LOT from Brussels via Berlin-Schönefeld to Warsaw-Okęcie , which crashed on December 19, 1962 during the approach, just under 1.5 km from the runway threshold. All 33 inmates were killed.

Flight and airplane

The Vickers Viscount V.804 with the serial number 395 was registered in April 1958 and operated by Transair, a member of Airwork, and after its takeover by British United Airways by the latter. On October 25, 1962, LOT acquired it with two other machines of the same type and registered it with the registration number SP-LVB. The LOT's intention was to use the Viscounts on the Western European routes , like five Convair CV-240s since 1957 . These aircraft types were intended to offer passengers from across the Iron Curtain , paying in valuable foreign currency, the standard of service to which they were used. The relatively new machine completed a total of 5,119 landings and 9,822 flight hours, including only 84 under the direction of LOT, after it was transferred to Warsaw on November 20, 1962.

The machine was used on a regular connection between Warsaw and Brussels via Berlin. On the afternoon of December 19, 1962, the machine was on its way back from Brussels (flight LO 248) with five passengers. After a stopover in Berlin-Schönefeld, where another 23 passengers had boarded, she took off, controlled by Mieczysław Rzepecki and Henryk Kafarski, at 17:55 for Warsaw, where she was scheduled to land at 19:35. In Warsaw there was a frost of −7 ° C and a thick cloud cover.

the accident

Thanks to the favorable westerly wind, the Viscount reached Warsaw early, but the crew could not touch it on the first approach and had to take off. After leaving the Fractus clouds at a height of 250 m on runway No. 3, direction 33 (from the south-east) during the second attempt to approach Warsaw-Okęcie Airport and reducing the flight altitude to about 60 to 70 m , the crew received landing permission at 7:30 p.m. Just 46 seconds after the radio contact, the machine crashed abruptly 1,335 m from the threshold without any signs of danger and broke into several individual parts. The airport fire brigade, which arrived quickly, found no survivors.

Victim

All 33 people present on board were killed. In addition to the five-person crew, 28 passengers died, including some prominent personalities:

• Fryderyk Bluemke, Polish engineer, engine designer (among others for FSO Syrena )
• Marek Kwiek, Polish acoustician, professor of University of Poznan , politicians ( SD ), the Sejm -Abgeordneter
• Heinz Rauch , German politician ( SED ), head of the State Central Administration for Statistics and member of the GDR Council of Ministers
• Marcin Szeligiewicz, Polish educator and cultural worker

nationality	Passengers	crew	total
Poland	19th	5	24
German Democratic Republic	5	0	5
Argentina	2	0	2
United States	1	0	1
Canada	1	0	1
total	28	5	33

The American and Canadian among the victims were of Polish descent, as was one of the two Argentine nationals; the other was of Swiss descent.

Cause of accident

An investigative committee chaired by Deputy Transport Minister Jan Rustecki was set up to clarify the incident. Despite the proximity to the airport, there were no eyewitnesses to the accident due to the darkness at night. The aircraft was not equipped with a flight recorder , as this was not yet part of the standard equipment of the traffic machines at that time. After a few days, foreign experts were called in for support. Examination of the aircraft debris revealed that the machine was most likely intact by the time of impact. The immediate cause of the crash was a stall in question. It is considered likely that in poor visibility, due to darkness and cloud cover, the crew greatly reduced their speed in order to better orientate themselves on the terrain. The throttled turboprop engines were characterized by a certain inertia and could not be brought to full thrust fast enough. After a short training session, the pilots were not sufficiently familiar with the machine they had only recently received. They probably used it with the habit that they had from airplanes powered by piston engines such as the Il-14 , in which the engines responded much faster to "accelerate".

The fact that at least one of the radio beacons at Warsaw Airport was defective, which was only disclosed years later, contributed to the accident , which forced the crew to disproportionately reduce speed. The instrument landing system was installed at this time, but not yet connected and thus was not available. The otherwise very experienced crew's lack of knowledge of the aircraft type is due to the fact that training was shortened and that British flight instructors did not have to accompany them on the first scheduled flights. The decision was made because of a lack of foreign currency.

The final report summarized these accident causes as follows:

1. wrong actions of the crew,
2. Deficiencies in crew training procedures and air traffic management.

Consequences of the accident and commemoration

Vickers Viscount SP-LVA of LOT, a sister machine of the aircraft involved in the accident

On December 20, 1962, Polish Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz condoled Willi Stoph, 1st Deputy Chairman of the GDR Council of Ministers, on the death of Heinz Rauch . On December 21, the Polish State Council posthumously awarded high medals to all fatally injured persons who had traveled by plane for official purposes . At the opening of the session on that day, the Sejm remembered the dead MP Marek Kwiek with a minute's silence. On December 22, the crew and another LOT employee who had died in the accident were buried in the Powązki cemetery in Warsaw . A street in his place of work, Katowice, was named after Marcin Szeligiewicz .

The flights of the two remaining Viscounts of the LOT were resumed, initially with a British flight instructor on board. However, the SP-LVA plane crashed in Belgium in August 1965 (four-man crew died, there were no passengers on board). As a result, the only remaining SP-LVC was sold, as the continued operation of a single aircraft was not economically viable.

The scene of the accident from 1962 is now inside the airport, shortly before the threshold of runway No. 3 (direction 15/33), after it was extended to 3,008 m in 1964 and to 3,690 m in the southeast in 1980. As a result, the crash site is not marked and inaccessible. This is not the only reason why the accident in Poland has been largely forgotten: in 1980 ( LOT flight 007 ) and 1987 ( LOT flight 5055 ) accidents with a large number of fatalities occurred in the vicinity of the airport .

Footnotes

1. ↑ Tragiczna katastrofa na Okęciu . In: Głos Koszaliński . No.  304 . Koszalin December 20, 1962, p. 2 ( szczecin.pl [accessed on May 13, 2013]).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Tragiczna katastrofa "Viscounta" PLL LOT na lotnisku w Okęciu . In: Dziennik Bałtycki . tape  XVIII , no. 301 . Danzig December 20, 1962, p. 1 ( bibliotekacyfrowa.eu [accessed May 13, 2013]).
3. ↑ Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network (English)
4. ↑ ^{a b} Viscount c / n 395 Operational Record. In: vickersviscount.net. Retrieved May 13, 2013 .  
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Przemysław Semczuk: 1962 Pech z viscountem . In: Newsweek Polska . Warsaw July 12, 2011 ( newsweek.pl [accessed May 13, 2013]).
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Po tragicznej katastrofie "Viscounta" na Okęciu: Ustalono już listę ofiar katastrofy . In: Dziennik Bałtycki . tape  XVIII , no. 302 . Danzig December 21, 1962, p. 1-2 ( bibliotekacyfrowa.eu [accessed May 13, 2013]).
7. ↑ Tragiczna katastrofa "Viscounta" PLL LOT na lotnisku w Okęciu . In: Dziennik Polski . tape  XVIII , no. 302 . Krakow December 20, 1962, p. 1 ( malopolska.pl [accessed May 13, 2013]).
8. ↑ ^{a b c} Pośmiertne odznaczenia dla ofiar katastrofy na Okęciu; Sejm uchwalił cztery ustawy . In: Dziennik Polski . tape  XVIII , no. 304 . Krakow December 22, 1962, p. 1 ( malopolska.pl [accessed May 13, 2013]).
9. ↑ ^{a b} Pogrzeb załogi samolotu. Komisja nadal bada przyczyny katastrofy na Okęciu . In: Dziennik Polski . tape  XVIII , no. 305 . Krakow December 23, 1962, p. 2 ( malopolska.pl [accessed May 13, 2013]).
10. ↑ Po tragicznym zgonie Heinza Raucha: Kondolencje premiera J. Cyrankiewicza / Częściowa lista Ofiar KATASTOFY LOTNICZNEJ na Okęciu . In: Głos Koszaliński . No.  305 . Koszalin December 21, 1962, p. 1 ( szczecin.pl [accessed on May 13, 2013]).