"WE PERISH" - The Most HORRIFIYING 54 Minutes Imaginable: LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055

LOT Polish Airlines was established in 1928 and continues to operate today as the flag carrier of Poland and one of the oldest airlines in the world. The airline has a fleet of 79 aircraft, helping people travel around the world, with their central hub at Warsaw Chopin Airport. The airline has an excellent safety record, with the last fatality occurring nearly 35 years ago on November 2nd, 1988, when LOT Polish Airlines Flight 703 was forced to crash land due to icing on the engine intakes. The crash landing was nearly a complete success, but one of the 29 occupants tragically died. A year and a half before Flight 703 however, was the second most recent fatal accident in LOT Polish Airline’s history and it was the most horrifying and deadly crash in the history of Polish aviation. It happened on May 9th, 1987 to LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055, bound from Warsaw to New York with the ultimate destination of San Francisco. The flight never made it out of Poland.

May 9th, 1987 was a Saturday and the airport in Warsaw, Poland was very busy. Flight 5055 was prepared to transport 183 occupants – 172 passengers and 11 crew – to JFK in New York City, a high load for the 186-seat Ilyushin IL-62M Aircraft, a Soviet long-range jetliner which had been built just 3 years earlier. All crew members were Polish including captain Zygmunt Pawalacyk, who was 59 years old with 19,745 flight hours experience and 44-year old first officer Leopold Karcher. The passengers were mostly Polish, but there were 17 from the United States, ready to return to their home country. There were some strong winds but otherwise no major weather concerns and everything seemed perfectly normal. The flight departed from Warsaw at 10:18 AM local time. Then, as the flight was ascending, word came from Traffic Control that the aircraft would be entering into an upcoming zone of military airspace, where military planes were in training. In order to avoid any chance to a collision, Air Traffic Control advised the pilot to increase the climb rate in order to get to 18,000 feet as quickly as possible.

After about 5 minutes of transmissions discussing the situation, Pawalacyk applied maximum thrust to the engines in order to get to the requested altitude quickly. This is the move that sealed the fate for Flight 5055, although Pawalacyk had no way of knowing that the bearings inside the aircraft’s number two engine were faulty. After a few minutes, the bearings reached a temperature of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit and exploded, causing a chain reaction leading to the turbine disc coming loose and a shower of debris wreaking havoc on the inner workings of the aircraft. The fuselage at the rear of the aircraft was damaged, flight control systems were severed, a fire broke out and several systems completely failed. The spread of the debris was so violent that Engine 1 was also affected and began to burn as well.

The crew had no idea what had gone wrong and had no time to attempt to find out. They could only try to land somewhere as soon as possible as the issue was clearly beyond severe. Both engines were now disabled and a fire was rapidly spreading, burning up the cargo holds in the back of the aircraft and moving quickly towards the cabin. The question of where to land was more difficult than simply approaching the nearest airport. There were multiple electrical failures, which prevented the crew from being able to quickly dump enough fuel to lighten the aircraft for an emergency landing. The fuel dump system would work intermittently, but not continuously. The aircraft had to be under 107 tons for a safe landing, but it was around 160 tons when the emergency occurred. So, instead of landing at the nearby Gdansk Lech Walsea Airport, the flight headed back to Warsaw, hoping to succeed in dumping the fuel before attempting to land.

The crew were able to dump enough fuel to make an emergency landing and could have attempted to do so at the military Warsaw Modlin Airport, which was on the way back to Warsaw Chopin. Based on the severity of the situation, it would have made sense to land at Modlin but at the last minute, the crew decided to continue towards Chopin, perhaps because they had better emergency equipment. Although Captain Pawalaczyk was obviously aware that a major emergency was occurring, he may have not understood the severity of the fire and burning engines due to the electrical failures preventing the fire detectors and warning lights from functioning properly. The decision to attempt to return to the original airport turned out to a major mistake.

Zygmunt Pawalacyk

The cargo continued to burn when the fuel tanks began to explode at around 10:53, 35 minutes after departure. Chaos had broken out everywhere at this point and the plane was literally falling apart while burning in mid-air. Several pieces of the aircraft were falling, causing fires to break out on the ground. The aircraft nearly made it to the airport, but any flight controls that were still working were destroyed by the relentless fire. This meant there was no functioning landing gear or pitch trim. Passengers from the back quickly moved towards the front of the vehicle away from the fire and smoke, causing the plane to go into a complete nose dive. There was no way to correct this as flying the aircraft was all but impossible at this point.

The flight recorder was one of the few devices actually working on the aircraft and it recorded the final words from the pilot at 11:12 local time: "Dobranoc! Do widzenia! Cześć, giniemy!" “Good night! Goodbye! We Perish.” The plane crashed into the forest at 295 Miles Per Hour, 3 ½ miles from the airport. All 183 occupants died immediately, bringing a sudden end to what was certainly the most horrifying 50 minutes of their entire lives.

The investigation that followed discovered that the roller bearings were designed to have 26 rollers inside but had just 13. The bearings were not completed due to a delay in supply and a deadline due to an expiring contract. The airline sent their report to Moscow, but the Soviet engineers and politicians denied the findings, saying the accident was due to pilot error. Later, they accepted responsibility and were forced to make several improvements to future aircrafts they would build for LOT Polish Airlines, including the doubling of flight control systems, more smoke detectors, and the replacement of flammable components with nonflammable ones. Most importantly, lab testing of the lubricating oil would be required after every flight. Such a test would have likely caught the problem with the bearings, the root cause of 183 deaths. The bad bearings seized up, causing the deadly chain reaction, leading to multiple engine failure, a horrific fire and a total failure of the electric system.

The crash site is still visible today, including the long scar in the forest where Flight 5055 made its final horrifying descent.