An-24 catastrophe under the Conquest

An-24B (in Latin - An-24B, but often referred to as An-24W) with the registration number SP-LTF (factory - 67302406, serial - 024-06) was released by the Kiev Aviation Plant in March 1966 . The airliner was sold to the Polish People's Republic , where by April 12 he entered the national airline LOT ^[1] . Since the crews used the call number rather than the flight number as the call sign, the SP-LTF call sign was “ Sim Pope Lima Tango Foxtrot ” (see ICAO Phonetic Alphabet ) or “ Tango Foxtrot ” for short ^[2] .

• The commander of the aircraft - Czesław Dalinski ( Polish. Czesław Doliński ). The experience of about 20 years, a raid over two million kilometers.
• The second pilot is Janusz Grzeczik ( Polish. Janusz Grześczyk )
• Flight engineer - Tadeusz Kasinski ( Polish. Tadeusz Kasiński )

The plane made a short domestic flight LO-165 from Warsaw to Krakow with a length of about 250 kilometers and an estimated duration of 50-55 minutes. Relatively good weather was expected on the route: clouds in the lowlands with a lower boundary of 500 meters, visibility up to 8 kilometers, strong north-west wind, westerly in the southern part of the route, snowfall is possible in the Krakow region. At 15:20, with 48 passengers and 5 crew members, the SP-LTF board departed from Okecze Airport , then turned south and headed for Krakow. After 19 minutes, the co-pilot, in accordance with the flight plan, reported to the ground about the passage of the Przysuha beacon ^[3] .

According to the plan, 10 minutes after the passage of Przysuhi, that is, at 15:49, flight 165 was supposed to pass Jedzhejów , and then switch to communication with the airport dispatcher Balice (Krakow). But at 15:53, the Okęce Dispatching Center was called from Balice and asked where the SP-LTF was missing. The assistant dispatcher answered the call, who said that, perhaps, the crew had just delayed the passage of Enzheuva because of the headwind. Such delays were not uncommon, but still in the Warsaw airport got worried and tried to call this missing plane. Finally, at 15:54, after the third attempt, this was succeeded, after which the aircraft commander Dalinsky reported that a minute ago they had passed Endzheyuv. After a couple of minutes from the plane they reported: Warsaw, this is Tango Foxtrot. Enjayuw passed at forty-nine [15:49] ... that is ... at fifty-two [15:52], I'm sorry. Enjayuw passed on [echelon] three nine hundred [meters] . The new time of the passage of the lighthouse was very different from the one transmitted earlier, but dispatcher Irena Kisilev ( Polish Irena Kisielew ) did not require the crew to clarify information, but instead reported in Balice that the plane was delayed with arrival due to headwinds ^[2] .

At 15:57, the crew established contact with Balice Airport and reported on the passage of Enzheuva at 15:49, and the airport’s radio beacon expects to pass in three to four minutes. However, at the indicated time, the aircraft did not pass this radio beacon. Nevertheless, the control dispatcher, suspecting a delay due to a headwind, gave instructions for reaching the radio beacon. The airport dispatchers were confident that flight 165 follows the correct route, although at 15:59 the pilots reported that Krakow was not yet watching. Then the Decca 424 radar of a longer range was turned on, after which the dispatchers on the screen saw the spot lights on the screen calmed down, having decided that one of them was the same plane. Further, the dispatcher instructed to descend to a height of 1200 meters. In turn, the crew could not determine the signal from the airport using the radio compass, so they decided that their radio compass failed, but there was no reason to worry, as the dispatcher observes them on the radar. At 16:05:34 the dispatcher asked the crew what kind of bearing they had from a distant driving radio station, to which they replied: 03 . At 16:05:47, the aircraft reported on occupying an altitude of 1200 meters, to which the dispatcher instructed to save it and head for the long-distance drive. At 16:08:17 the dispatcher conveyed: Tango Foxtrot, turning right on the course of one hundred and ten degrees and decrease to six hundred meters . At that very moment, the communication with the SP-LTF board was broken ^{[2] [4]} .

After several unsuccessful attempts to contact the SP-LTF , the dispatchers at 16:13 contacted the military Li-2 near Krakow and asked for help in finding the disappeared An-24 . But from a military aircraft it was reported that they did not observe either the aircraft or signs of its fall. Then, at the Balice airport, a phone call rang out - the police of the town of Zawoy , which is fifty kilometers south-south-west of Krakow, reported that a plane had crashed not far from them on the slope of the Babi massif . By 20 o'clock, search teams arrived at the scene of the incident, which confirmed the worst - it was the missing flight 165. Although good weather was expected in the Krakow region, there was a snowstorm south of the mountains. Flying through a snowfall at an altitude of 1200 meters, the An-24 crashed into the forested slope of Polichi mountain at a speed of 520 km / h and plushed through the trees for 200 meters, and all 53 people on board died ^{[ 4] [2]} . At that time, this aircraft crash was the largest in the country and among the An-24 aircraft. Currently (2015) is in the given categories, respectively, the third (after the disasters in Warsaw in 1980 and 1987 ) and the sixth place, respectively ^[5] .

• Zenon Klemensevich - a linguist, member of the Polish Academy of Knowledge and the Polish Academy of Sciences .
• Stanislav Tkachev (1913–1969) - Minister of Forestry in 1945–1947, ambassador of the People’s Republic of Poland in Mongolia in 1960–1966, member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party in 1948–1968, Lviv voevoda in 1944–1945, deputy of the State Council and Seimas in 1944–1956.

The very next day after the catastrophe, Radio Liberty transmitted that the plane had actually been hijacked, while the hijackers could have headed, for example, to Vienna , or some other European city outside the Eastern bloc. The cause of the disaster in this case could be a fight between the pilots and the hijacker (or hijackers), during which the plane went out of control and fell from the train. However, Polish investigators, checking the data on all people on board, quickly denied the hijacking version. Of all the passengers, only two LOT pilots could fly the An-24, who flew passengers on this flight, but they had no reason to flee the country ^[2] .

Official Conclusion

The investigation itself was largely complicated by the fact that the flight recorders of the aircraft were not sufficiently reliable in design and collapsed during the crash, and therefore the investigators could not obtain objective data on the flight. Also, the aircraft "An" was not equipped with a voice recorder, because of which there were only records of the crew’s negotiations with the dispatchers. The investigation took three months, after which the commission came to the conclusion that it could not accurately determine the reason for which the plane suddenly deviated from the track and continued to follow further south towards the mountains. The main version was the error of the crew commander, who concealed health problems from doctors, and in a fatal flight he could have a heart attack, which also distracted the rest of the crew from piloting. At the same time, the plane continued to follow in a southerly direction, which is why the crew soon soon lost its way, but did not try to find the airport, keeping the direction of flight ^[2] .

Alternative Versions

However, the Minister of Communications, Peter Lewinsky ( Polish. Piotr Lewiński ), who had a son died in the crash, did not agree with this version, so another commission was created on his order. This commission also included military doctor Stanislav Milewski ( Polish. Stanisław Milewski ), who after examining the body of the crew commander confirmed that he had a heart attack shortly before his death, but he did not cause a catastrophe, because at the time of the collision with the mountain both pilots sat in their seats and at the direction of the controller performed a sharp turn. To study the flight trajectory of the aircraft, the assistance of the military was requested, which provided data from military radars. As a result, the second commission came to the conclusion that the accident occurred for a banal reason - the pilots got lost, after which, without knowing their exact location, they began to blindly carry out the air traffic controller commands. But this was not the only factor that led to the catastrophe, because there were violations in the work of the dispatch center in Krakow. So, the airport had a relatively new Decca 424 radar installed in 1967 and covering a radius of 30 kilometers. But it was used not as primary, but as secondary, since over the past two years they could not be properly tuned, and therefore it was mostly turned off. When the dispatchers did turn on this radar, the plane was already outside its range, since the crash occurred fifty kilometers from the airport ^[2] .

There is also a version that on the day of the incident at the Balice airport, in fact, both radars did not work, but it was not possible to verify or confirm this information ^[2] .