LOT Polish Airlines Flight LO 165 was an

Antonov An-24 The Antonov An-24 (Russian/Ukrainian: Антонов Ан-24) (NATO reporting name: Coke) is a 44-seat twin turboprop transport/passenger aircraft designed in 1957 in the Soviet Union by the Antonov Design Bureau and manufactured by Kyiv, Irku ...

aircraft, registration SP-LTF, operating a scheduled

passenger flight An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in which ...

from

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

to Krakow Balice airport. It crashed into a mountain on 2 April 1969 at 16:08 local time (UTC+1) during a

snowstorm A winter storm is an event in which wind coincides with varieties of precipitation that only occur at freezing temperatures, such as snow, Rain and snow mixed, mixed snow and rain, or freezing rain. In temperate continental climates, these sto ...

. All 53 people (47 passengers and 6 crew) on board were killed.

Flight history

Introduction

Much of the known information about the accident comes from two newspaper articles published in 1994. Their author wrote that, even 25 years after the accident, most documentation on the crash remained classified. Reports were based on the accounts of participants in the rescue action and some members of the accident investigation commission who asked for anonymity.

Flight

The aircraft took off at 15:20 local time for a 55-minute flight to Krakow's Balice Airport. The

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

was Czesław Doliński. At 15.49, the first officer received instructions to descend to and get in touch with Balice

control tower Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airsp ...

after passing Jędrzejów, less than 80 km north of Krakow. A military radar registered the aircraft at that time at altitude. The pilots informed controllers in Okęcie and Balice when the plane had passed Jędrzejów VOR, but caused confusion by providing three different passage times a few minutes apart. Shortly thereafter and before 16:00, the captain (who by then had taken over control) called Balice, gave his altitude as , received the local weather report, and then was instructed to descend to . At 16:01, the aircraft was recorded at and descending. In the next eight minutes, a series of radio exchanges took place between the aircraft and the Balice radar operator, with the captain repeatedly asking for his fix and reporting problems with the beacon signal, and the operator asking for the aircraft's position and altitude to help him find the aircraft on the radar screen. At 16:05, the aircraft was noted near

Maków Podhalański Maków Podhalański (known as ''Maków'' until 1930) is a town in southern Poland, on the Skawa Skawa (german: Schaue) is a river in southern Poland, a right tributary of the Vistula. It originates in the Western Carpathians (Beskids), is lon ...

, some 50 km past Krakow, at a height of . The last transmission received from the airplane was, "Left turn to further...-" at 16:08.17. Seconds after that, radio contact was lost. The plane subsequently crashed on the northern slope of Polica mountain, near

Zawoja Zawoja is a village in southern Poland located close to Maków Podhalański. It is situated in Sucha County ( Lesser Poland Voivodeship). With neighbouring village of Skawica it constitutes a rural Zawoja Commune. It has 6,200 inhabitants (200 ...

, southern

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

, at an altitude of .

Controversy

The official death toll of 53 remains controversial. The LOT manifest included 53 passengers and 5 crew members, but two days after the crash Polish press agencies published (based on LOT's information) 46 surnames (part of them without an address or name). Among the passengers were 49 Poles, 3 Americans, and a Briton. The official accident report, published in 1970, blamed the accident on the

becoming lost. No reasons were given as to why the aircraft, just before the crash, was flying at low altitude some past its intended destination. After the accident, the code 165 was still used by the airline. In 1978, the flight was hijacked by two women who are seeking political asylum in West Germany.

References

External links