LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 before the fatal crash (Image: Felix Goetting/Wikimedia Commons)
LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 was supposed to be a standard transatlantic journey from Warsaw to New York City. But the flight would end in a catastrophic fireball that claimed all 183 lives onboard, becoming the worst aviation disaster in Polish history.
Hauntingly, the final words of pilot Zygmunt Pawlacyzk, a 59 year old air travel veteran, were also immortalised, captured by air-traffic control as the jet plummeted to its doom.
It was a bright and unassuming September morning as passengers boarded the aircraft, a Soviet-built Ilyushin Il-62M.
The aircraft, still popular in countries such as Russia and North Korea, had been constructed four years earlier, in 1983, and should have been in generally sound condition.
But within minutes of its 10:18am departure from Warsaw, air traffic controllers urged the crew to climb rapidly to avoid military training aircraft. The pilots pushed the ageing jet hard, a decision which would prove fatal, reports the Daily Record.
A memorial to those who lost their lives (Image: Grzegorz Petka/Wikimedia Commons)
Nine minutes after maximum thrust was applied, as the aircraft roared over northern Poland, faulty roller bearings in one of the engines, fitted with just 13 rollers instead of the required 26, overheated to a terrifying 1,000°C.
The heat disintegrated the engine shaft, causing the turbine disc to explode like a bomb. Shrapnel ripped through the fuselage and remaining engines, cutting flight controls and setting the aircraft ablaze.
As flames spread, burning debris flew into the cabin, prompting passengers to surge towards the cockpit and further destabilising the already unstable aircraft.
In the cockpit, the crew could be heard shouting « Fire! Two engines are gone. »
Captain Pawlacyzk contacted air-traffic control at Warsaw to inform them of the blaze and request permission to turn back and attempt an emergency landing, just 3.5km away.
But the aircraft was too badly damaged, a realisation the control tower heard Captain Pawlacyzk come to as he uttered his heartbreaking last words: « Good night! Goodbye! Bye, we’re dying! »
Seconds later, just miles from the runway, the stricken jet plunged nose-first into a forest outside Warsaw at nearly 300mph, exploding on impact. There were no survivors, and the bodies were so severely disfigured that 62 were never identified.
The Polish government declared two days of national mourning and erected a memorial at the site of the crash, which remains the worst in Polish history.
Mass tragedies like this have become less frequent in recent decades despite rising flight numbers, and yet last month, 260 people died when an Air India flight failed to ascend after takeoff.
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