LOT Flight 007

LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007 was an Ilyushin Il-62 that crashed near Warsaw-Okecie Airport in Poland, on 14 March 1980, as the crew aborted a landing and attempted to go-around, killing all 77 passengers and 10 crew members on board. It was caused by the disintegration of a turbine disc in one of the plane's engines, leading to uncontained engine failure. The turbine shaft was later found to have manufacturing faults.

Aircraft, crew, and passengers

LOT Polish Airlines initiated its transatlantic routes in the early 1970s, for which it decided to purchase Ilyushin Il-62s. The aircraft that crashed was the first Il-62 that LOT had purchased for these routes, manufactured in 1971. The crashed plane, registered as SP-LAA, was at one point named after astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (Polish: ''Mikołaj Kopernik'').

All of the crew members of Flight 007 were Polish. The captain, Paweł Lipowczan, was 46 years old, with 8,770 flight hours' experience, half of them on Ilyushin Il-62s. The first officer was Tadeusz Łochocki. The remaining flight crew were flight engineer Jan Łubniewski, flight navigator Konstanty Chorzewski, and radio operator Stefan Wąsiewicz. There were five flight attendants on board.

Future world heavyweight champion boxer Tony Tucker was supposed to be on Flight 007 but could not go because of a shoulder injury. All 87 people on board were killed, including 14 boxers and 8 staff members of the U.S. boxing team, and Polish pop singer Anna Jantar.

Accident

On its final flight, the aircraft was piloted by Captain Lipowczan and First Officer Łochocki. Flight 007 was scheduled to depart from New York's Kennedy International Airport at about 19:00 local time on 13 March 1980, but it was delayed because of a heavy snowstorm. It finally departed at 21:18, and after nine hours of an uneventful flight, it was approaching Warsaw-Okęcie Airport at 11:13 local time. During their final approach, about one minute before the landing, the crew reported to Okęcie Air Traffic Control (ATC) that the landing gear indicator light was not operating, and that they would go around and allow the flight engineer to check if it was caused by a burnt-out fuse or light bulb, or if there was actually some problem with the gears deploying.

This was the last transmission from LOT 007.
Nine seconds later, the aircraft suddenly entered a steep dive. At 11:14:35, after 26 seconds of uncontrolled descent, the aircraft clipped a tree with its right wing and impacted the ice-covered moat of a 19th-century military fortress at a speed of approximately at a 20-degree down angle, from the runway threshold and from a residential area. According to investigators analyzing the wreckage, at the last moment Captain Lipowczan, using nothing but the plane's ailerons, managed to avoid hitting a correctional facility for teenagers located at Rozwojowa Street. On impact, the aircraft disintegrated; a large part of the main hull submerged in the moat, while the tail and parts of the main landing gear landed some metres further, just before the entrance to the fort. On the scene, a diving team was later trying to recover parts of the aircraft (including some of the engines) from the moat, but it was far too murky. Ultimately, the moat had to be drained to allow the investigators to recover parts of the disintegrated plane. The body of Captain Lipowczan was found lying on the street about from the crash site; other bodies were scattered among the plane parts. The majority of the victims were found to be bisected due to seat belts being fastened at the time of impact.

Among the 87 fatalities were Polish singer Anna Jantar, American ethnomusicologist Alan P. Merriam, six Polish students returning home from an AIESEC conference in New York, and a contingent of the U.S. amateur boxing team (who were scheduled for a series of exhibition fights in Europe instead of the boycotted Summer Olympics). According to doctors who arrived at the scene, many of the passengers were apparently asleep when the plane hit the ground, but some of them – including many of the boxers – were supposedly aware that they were about to crash, as they gripped their seats so tightly that on impact, the muscles and tendons in their arms became severed. Some reports suggested that some of the boxers actually survived the crash and drowned in the moat, but no evidence for this was presented. A total of 22 U.S. boxers, trainers, and doctors died in the accident, including the 1979 Pan American Games light welterweight winner Lemuel Steeples. A number of Olympic team members were not on the flight due to various boxing injuries or other reasons.

Investigation

Recovery of wreckage

The police quickly surrounded the site and removed spectators. Recovery of airplane pieces and victims started soon afterwards. Both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were found quickly. Unfortunately, the recordings suddenly stopped nine seconds after the last radio transmission, 26 seconds before the crash.

The landing gear was found to be properly extended and locked. The Polish TV documentary '' Czarny serial'' (''Black series'') interviewed Captain Tomasz Smolicz, a pilot who flew thousands of hours on transatlantic Ilyushins Il-62 and Il-62M, including SP-LAA's flight from Warsaw to New York the day before the crash. Smolicz stated that the planes returning to Warsaw from the United States usually landed on runway course 150 (150 degrees, south-south-east), and if they landed at or before noon on a sunny day such as 14 March 1980, the sun would be shining almost directly in their eyes, which were weary after several hours of night flight and constant monitoring of cockpit instruments. This sometimes caused disorientation and confusion if an indicator light actually was lit or not. So, on that day, the landing gear indicator could have actually been lit, but the crew members might not have seen it correctly.

Upon recovery of the airplane parts, engine 2 (inner left) was found to be cut in half, held together only by the fuel lines. When the engine was further examined, the disc of the low-pressure turbine was missing, despite an extensive search of the crash site. Finally, the turbine disc was found about from the site; it was broken into three similar-sized pieces.

After recovering the cockpit, the throttles of both engines 2 (inner left) and 3 (inner right) were found to be shut off, while engine 4 (outer right) was set to maximum thrust. The investigating commission asked the Soviets if an Il-62 was able to reach the runway with one engine operating. No conclusive answer was received, but calculations based on the official technical data suggested that, while one engine's thrust was insufficient for the aircraft to maintain altitude, it was enough to reach the runway and try to land. No immediate explanation was found for why the aircraft experienced a steep dive with one engine operating at maximum power.

Detailed analysis of the three pieces of the turbine disc found several metallic impurities on the edges of two of them. In one case, they were identified as coming from the engine nacelle; in another, the impurities came from the nacelle, the hull, control actuators, and electrical cables. Also, detailed examination of the surface of the broken disc showed significant evidence of fatigue cracking.

Sequence of events

Finally, when the control pushers were found to be cut in half, and it was proven that the cut was not caused by the crash, and some traces of the turbine disc's metal alloy were found on the surface of the cut, the sequence of events became clear. The disaster started when LOT 007 was instructed to climb to a higher flight level, for its second approach to the runway. When the necessary thrust was applied to all four engines, the low-pressure turbine of engine 2 disintegrated after nine seconds. One piece of the turbine disc was ejected upwards, not causing any significant damage. The second piece shot into engine 1, damaging it seriously. The third piece of the disc shot into the hull, severed the rudder and elevator control rods and destroyed engine 3, causing loss of control over the plane. The third piece also severed power cables for both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, causing the last moments of LOT 007 not to be recorded.

The cut control rods also explained the sudden dive. When they were cut, the tail section's horizontal stabilizer, under its own weight, dropped down, causing the nose also to go down. This could be counteracted by the vertical trim; in Il-62s, the switch setting the vertical trim to manual operation was secured by a thin, sharp wire. On Captain Lipowczan's right hand, small wounds were found, and they were confirmed to be made while Lipowczan was still alive. Supposedly, he ripped off the security wire and tried to control the vertical trim, but it was too late.

Causes of disaster

According to the Polish government's Special Disaster Commission, the crash was caused by defects in materials, faults in the manufacturing process of the Kuznetsov NK-8 jet engine's shaft, and weaknesses in the design of its turbine. The NK-8 is a two-spool turbofan engine, with two low-pressure turbines driving the fan and low-pressure compressor, and one high-pressure turbine driving the higher stages of the compressor.

During manufacture of the low-pressure shaft, at a position where its section diameter increases, a sharp, 90-degree step was made, resulting in a sudden diameter change over a very short linear length – a classic "notch" condition for stress concentration, which results in fatigue cracking at that location. Additionally, the metallurgical analysis found that the shaft was incorrectly heat-treated during manufacture and contained contaminant particles such as non-metallic inclusions, which further reduced the shaft's ability to carry the torsional loads as designed. The improper machining and impurities facilitated an accelerated fatigue fracture of this key engine component via unmitigated formation of micro-cracks through the shaft's core, ultimately leading to its failure.

Over time, the defects in the turbine shaft became large enough and the shaft broke, resulting in the physical separation of the low-pressure turbine from the low-pressure compressor. As a result, the low-pressure turbine explosively disintegrated. Ejected with enormous force, pieces of the turbines damaged two further engines and cut through the hull. This caused the failure of the vertical and horizontal flight controls (rudder and elevator), and a catastrophic failure of numerous systems of the aircraft. The sudden loss of control of the flight control surfaces caused a steep, unrecoverable dive and resulted in the crash, 26 seconds after the original engine failure.

Cost pressures

A press article, released in Poland in 2010 and based on the review of archival documentation kept in IPN, claimed that Polish government authorities contributed to the crash by demanding savings from LOT and excessive exploitation of engines. As Poland's economy struggled in the late 1970s, the Ministry of Transport required LOT to reduce costs. One of the first measures was to minimize refueling planes in foreign airports due to higher jet fuel prices. Aircraft were fueled in Poland to the maximum possible take-off weight, increasing engine wear. Conversely, they had a relatively small amount of fuel in reserve on the return flight, which sometimes forced them to land in bad weather.

Warranty service life of NK-8-4 engines was 5,000 hours (3,000 to 5,000 hours is typical for such engines), but about half of LOT engines failed after just 2,000–3,000 hours. Because of this, Polish pilots often called the Il-62 "flying coffins". In spite of the low reliability, the airline decided to lengthen overhaul intervals to reduce the frequency of repairs, which were carried out in Soviet factories and quite expensive. LOT sent a letter to the Ilyushin Design Bureau reporting a test finding that the engines could operate normally for 8,600 hours without maintenance. The design bureau replied that the Poles could fly the engines for as long as they wanted, but the manufacturer was responsible only for 5,000 flight hours.

Increased stress on the engines and lengthening of the service interval led to growing failures. John F. Kennedy Airport reported two cases in the previous two years when the IL-62 flew from the United States to Warsaw without passengers, on three engines. The most-common causes of failure were bending or breaking of the fan blades. Consequently, there were not enough serviceable engines. LOT fell into the practice of using three engines within the service interval, and a fourth beyond the interval. The investigation revealed the practice to be widespread. The airline called the fourth engines "leaders".

Initially, SP-LAA engine 2 was installed on a sister aircraft SP-LAC, but after 1,700 hours of flying in 1975, the engine was removed due to damage of a low-pressure compressor blade and sent for repair to the Soviet Union. After repair, the engine was placed on another Il-62, SP-LAB. After 5,000 hours of flight, vibration was detected above the acceptable level and felt noticeably in the back of the aircraft. Therefore, in 1978 the engine was again removed for repair in Poland and subsequently installed on SP-LAA, with vibrations continuing but deemed acceptable. After this repair, the engine accumulated 700 flight hours before the accident.

Before the flight to New York, the aircraft was checked by mechanic Zdzisław Jarmoniak, who found that engine 1 had a defect in one of the turbine blades. This deformation was located in the lowest (and widest) part of the blade. The mechanic wanted to report it, but found that the defect was already marked there (noted), and the plane was subsequently allowed to fly. As he later explained to investigators, the mechanic decided that the defect was within tolerance. Engine 3 had 8,200 hours operating time without repair. The aircraft was allowed to fly to New York on three engines, and only engine 4 was fully serviceable.

Aftermath

The Polish government's Special Disaster Commission sent its findings on the cause of the accident to Moscow. In response, Russian engineers and scientists stated that the reasons given were implausible and that the turbine disintegrated ''because of'' engine failure, the opposite of what was stated in the Polish report.

Many years later it was revealed that after Flight 007's crash, all Il-62s used by Soviet officials and VIPs had their engines discreetly replaced with newer ones. On one occasion, a Polish Il-62M had specially installed newer engines for a joint Polish-Soviet governmental trip to Beijing; after that, the new engines were returned to the Soviet Union. The Polish commission report also called for some modernizations in the Il-62 design, most notably doubling the flight controls, so that if one system failed the plane would still be controllable. At the time, redundant controls of this kind were in general use in American- and European-made airliners. This issue was never addressed by the Soviets; none of their Ilyushins of any type had installed alternate controls.

A bronze statue dedicated to the boxers who perished in the accident – a trigonal prism with a knocked-down boxer at the top – was installed at the grounds of Warsaw sport club Skra Warszawa, and later moved near the Warsaw Olympic Center. An identical statue is located at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. The statues were funded by Thomas Kane of Printon Kane and Company and by AIBA, and produced by American sculptor A. Thomas Schomberg in 1984.

The graves of LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007 crew are located at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw. One of the streets adjacent to the crash site bears the name of Captain Paweł Lipowczan.

See also

* List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft
* List of accidents involving sports teams
* LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 (1987) – another Il-62 crash near Warsaw caused by disintegration of an engine shaft

References

Most of this article is based on information, interviews and documents presented in two episodes of '' Czarny serial'' (''Black series''), TV documentaries in 2000–2001 about major disasters in post-war Poland – episodes "Kopernik" (LOT Flight 007) and "Kościuszko" (LOT Flight 5055).

External links

Interia.pl article
, with many photos

Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives summary
with many photos



Wikimapia.org map of crash site

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