LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Warsaw to New York City. In the late-morning hours of 9 May 1987, the Ilyushin Il-62 operating the flight crashed in the Kabaty Woods nature reserve on the outskirts of Warsaw around 54 minutes after departure. All 183 passengers and crew on board were killed in the crash, making it the deadliest accident involving an Ilyushin Il-62, and the deadliest aviation disaster in Polish history.
The accident was determined to have been caused by the disintegration of an engine shaft due to faulty bearings. This led to a catastrophic failure of the two left engines and then an onboard fire, both of which eventually destroyed all flight-control systems.
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft was a 186-seat Ilyushin Il-62M built in 1983, registered SP-LBG and named after Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish military leader and national hero. It was one of seven Il-62Ms that LOT bought from the Soviet Union in 1983, and it was used on international routes. By the time of the accident, it had flown 6,971 hours and made 1,752 landings, against a service life of 30,000 hours and an overhaul interval of 10,000 hours. Other accounts give different flight-time totals, with the writer Aleksander Grobicki citing just over 5,000 hours and the journalist Jarosław Reszka just under 7,000 hours. It was powered by four Soloviev D-30KU turbofan engines mounted in pairs at the rear of the fuselage. The two engines on the left side were numbered 1 (outer) and 2 (inner). On 8 May 1987, the aircraft returned to Warsaw from a transatlantic flight from Chicago and underwent a routine six-hour check in preparation for its next transatlantic flight.
Crew
All of the crew members were Polish. The captain, Zygmunt Pawlaczyk, aged 59, had been a military pilot since 1951 and had joined LOT in 1955. He had 19,745 flight hours, including 5,542 hours on the Il-62, of which 3,725 were as captain. The first officer, Leopold Karcher, had been a military pilot since 1956 and had joined LOT in 1967. He had 10,899 flight hours, of which 2,357 were on the Il-62. The navigator was Lesław Łykowski, and the radio operator was Leszek Bogdan. The flight engineer, Wojciech Kłossek, had been an instructor flight engineer on the Ilyushin Il-18 from 1985 and a flight engineer on the Il-62M since 1986. He had 5,100 flight hours, of which 291 were on the Il-62M. An instructor flight engineer, Ryszard Chmielewski, who had 10,571 flight hours, of which 6,695 were on the Il-62, was on board to monitor Kłossek's progress. The cabin crew consisted of five flight attendants.
Accident
Departure and climb
The aircraft's take-off weight was 167 tonnes. After receiving clearance at 10:17 CEST, it took off from runway 33 at Okęcie Airport at 10:18. It climbed along airway R23 towards Grudziądz, and it was due to leave Polish airspace near Darłowo. Because the aircraft had not reached 18,000 ft (5,500 m) by the time it passed the TMN beacon near Płońsk, approach control instructed the crew to level off at 16,000 ft (4,900 m). Military aircraft were operating at 17,000 ft (5,200 m), and civilian controllers had no radio contact with them to ensure separation. Area control then took over the flight, which continued at 16,000 ft. At 10:31, area control ordered an expedited climb to the cruising altitude of 31,000 ft (9,400 m), and the flight engineer set the engines to full take-off power for 30 seconds. The flight continued normally until 10:41.
Engine failure
At 10:41, 23 minutes into the flight, the aircraft was passing over Warlubie, near Grudziądz, at an altitude of 8,200 m (26,900 ft) and a speed of 815 km/h (440 kn), when the low-pressure turbine of engine No. 2 disintegrated. Turbine fragments damaged engine No. 1 and set it on fire, punctured the rear fuselage and caused an explosive decompression, and severed electrical cables. The crew reported the decompression, the loss of two engines and a fire. The cause of the failure was unknown to the crew, who initially thought that the aircraft had been struck by something, although one crew member said that there had been an explosion in an engine.
Pawlaczyk declared an emergency and decided to leave the planned route and turn back towards Warsaw. Because of the decompression, he also began a rapid descent to 4,000 m (13,000 ft). During the turn, the crew noticed that the flight controls were not working properly. The elevator no longer responded, and the crew could control the aircraft's pitch only with the elevator trim tab, which is normally used to balance the aircraft aerodynamically. At 10:44, the warning system indicated that the engine fire had been extinguished, and the crew began preparing to dump fuel. The Il-62M's maximum landing weight was 107 tonnes, and only 6 tonnes of fuel had been used since take-off. Fuel could be dumped only in straight flight, not while circling over a limited area. The flight engineer found that only one of the aircraft's four electrical generators was working, and the crew switched off non-essential electrical equipment. Because the fuel dump valves were electrically operated, power interruptions prevented them from working properly. The crew briefly considered landing at Gdańsk, but Pawlaczyk decided to return to Warsaw.
Diversion and approach
With engines No. 1 and 2 shut down and the aircraft still heavy, Pawlaczyk could not maintain altitude, and the aircraft gradually descended. As the situation worsened, he asked to divert to the military airfield at Modlin. Warsaw air traffic control contacted military controllers to obtain permission, while the crew weighed the lack of information on Modlin's runway and weather conditions. By then the aircraft had descended to about 3,000 m (9,800 ft), and the crew noticed sparks at the rear of the aircraft. Permission to land at Modlin was granted at 10:54, and the crew received details of the runway's position, length and approach heading.
Information on the weather at Modlin, particularly the wind direction, was slow to arrive, and the crew reconsidered landing at Okęcie, which had full emergency cover for what was likely to be a crash landing. At 11:00, Pawlaczyk decided to continue to Okęcie. Its rescue services were better equipped for the emergency landing of a large airliner than those at Modlin, although Modlin was also prepared. At that point, the aircraft was about 90 km (56 mi) from Okęcie, flying at 495 km/h (267 kn) at an altitude of 2,050 m (6,730 ft).
Air traffic control directed the aircraft towards Piaseczno, and Pawlaczyk ordered the cabin crew to prepare the passengers for an emergency landing. At 11:04, about 35 tonnes of fuel remained in the tanks, and the crew managed to reopen the dump valves and jettison fuel down to 32 tonnes before dumping stopped again. Because of the fire, Pawlaczyk asked to land on runway 15, but the crew had difficulty establishing the aircraft's position relative to the runway. He therefore decided to approach runway 33 from the direction of Piaseczno, circling Okęcie to the west over Raszyn, which allowed a landing into the wind at a lower ground speed and on a steeper approach path. Near Józefosław, about 10 km (6.2 mi) from the runway, burnt parts of the structure and cabin fittings fell from the aircraft and started fires on the ground.
Crash
The final approach began at 11:08, when a warning indicated that the landing gear had not extended, which meant that the aircraft would have to make a belly landing. The crew also reported a fire in the baggage hold. Air traffic control proposed the shortest possible route to the runway, and Pawlaczyk, who was finding the aircraft increasingly difficult to control, flew a tighter turn. The fire, which was visible to witnesses on the ground, damaged the trim control system, and the aircraft began alternately to descend and climb. Less than 6 km (3.7 mi) from the airport, the crew could not correct one of these oscillations, and the aircraft dived towards the Kabaty Woods. About a minute before impact, Pawlaczyk radioed, "We are turning left. We will do all we can."
At 11:12:13, the aircraft struck the trees of the Kabaty Woods at about 470 km/h (250 kn), 5,700 m (3.5 mi) from the runway. The last words recorded from the cockpit were "Dobranoc, do widzenia! Cześć, giniemy!" ("Good night, goodbye! Bye, we're dying!"). The aircraft disintegrated on impact, and everyone on board was killed instantly.
Victims
The aircraft carried 172 passengers and 11 crew. Seventeen of the passengers were United States citizens, and 21 of the Polish passengers lived permanently abroad, although Grobicki gives the latter figure as 25. Five of the passengers were LOT employees. The oldest passenger was 95 years old, and the youngest was about 18 months old, although the journalist Marek Sarjusz-Wolski gives the youngest passenger's age as two. One booked passenger missed the flight because her customs clearance was prolonged after she failed to declare a fur coat.
While preparing for the emergency landing, the cabin crew found that one of the flight attendants was missing. The crew linked her disappearance to a door that might have been torn away, and some press reports suggested that she had been sucked out of the aircraft during the decompression. A search of the forests around Warlubie by a regiment of the Motorised Reserves of the Citizens' Militia found no trace of her, and her body was not identified at the crash site. She was probably in the rear technical compartment, which was damaged by turbine fragments, when she lost consciousness from the drop in pressure and lack of oxygen and died in the fire in the rear fuselage, and her remains were most likely among the 62 bodies that could not be identified.
Rescue and recovery
The Warsaw fire brigade was informed at 11:08 that the aircraft would be dumping fuel, and at 11:09 that a fire was likely. At 11:12, the duty officer was notified of the crash by the airport fire service and by a local resident, who reported fire and smoke rising from the Kabaty Woods. Firefighters extinguished a fire covering about 6 hectares (15 acres), secured the site against onlookers and searched an area of about 7 hectares (17 acres) for anyone needing help, although the state of the wreckage made survival appear impossible. Fires started along the approach path by debris falling from the aircraft and by dumped fuel were put out by about 12:00. In all, 44 firefighting sections with 195 firefighters took part in the operation. More than 700 soldiers of the Polish People's Army, together with local residents, searched the area near Grudziądz for engine parts that had fallen from the aircraft.
Both flight recorders were recovered from the wreckage. Some of the passengers' belongings were also recovered, among them a New Testament in which a passenger had written on the title page, "9 May 1987. The aircraft's damaged... God, what will happen now". The inscription showed that the passengers had been aware of the emergency. No body was found intact, and only 121 of the victims were identified. Press reports of looting at the crash site were not confirmed by the prosecutor's office, although Reszka considered it likely that some looting had taken place before the police and the army secured the area.
Investigation
Prime Minister Zbigniew Messner appointed a special government commission to investigate the accident, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Zbigniew Szałajda. Its members included officials from the Ministry of Transport, the armed forces, the Citizens' Militia, the fire service, the Prosecutor General's office, LOT and the Institute of Aviation. A separate investigation was carried out by the Warsaw Voivodeship Prosecutor's Office. The commission first met on 11 May 1987 and had access to both flight recorders. Most of the technical work was carried out by a technical subcommission, which worked with Polish research institutes and universities, LOT's technical department, the Soviet State Scientific Research Institute of Civil Aviation and the design bureaus of the aircraft and engine. The commission's official statement said that specialists from the aircraft and engine manufacturers had taken part and had provided all the necessary materials. In practice, however, the commission received no data from the manufacturer beyond the standard manuals for crews and maintenance staff, and all calculations of the aircraft's flight mechanics had to be made from scratch.