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IL62 Image: Felix Goetting http://www.airliners.net/photo/LOT---Polish/Ilyushin-Il-62M/1253004/L
Turbofan Diagram: K. Aainsqatsi
Ball Bearing Image: Silberwolf
Memorial Image: Grzegorz Petka


This is the story of LOT flight 5055, On the 9th of may 1987, A Lot polish airlines IL62 was flying from Warsaw to new york. The plane was to head to san francisco after refueling at new york. At 10:18 am the plane took off from runway 33 bound for New york. Shortly after taking off from Warsaw, flight 5055 was instructed to climb to 18,000 feet immediately. Military air planes were training in the area and to ensure proper separation they had to climb very quickly, the controller said “Climb immediately. I mean it, immediately”, the pilots applied full power to comply with the controllers request and so they started their climb. 9 minutes went by and the plane was passing through 27,000 feet near the village of lipinki. Suddenly an explosion rocked the plane and something at the back had exploded, this was serious.

The crew suddenly realized that they did not have elevator controls any more. Meaning that they couldn't pitch the plane up and down , they did however have pitch trim. In addition to that two of their engines, the engines on the left hand engine were out, they had little to no pitch control and half of their engines were inoperative. The pilots started an emergency decent down to 13,000 feet. They now needed to figure out how to land this stricken plane, but before they could land the plane they had to figure out where they could land it. The closet airport was Gdansk. But they had a problem, the plane at takeoff weighed 167 tons or 334,000 pounds, up until this point they had only used up 6 tons of fuel or 12,000 pounds of fuel the landing weight for an IL62 was 107 tons or 239,000 pounds, due to issues that they were having with the electrical system they couldn't start a fuel dump.

Their next option was a military airport in Modlin, the airport could accommodate the il62 but its emergency services were not as good as Warsaw's, but nonetheless they decided to head back towards Warsaw as it had better emergency services and equipment.

At 10:53 am another explosion rocked the plane. On the CVR the crew could be head dealing with the pressurization system of the plane it had failed, they were frantically trying to make sense of what was happening.

Their plan was to land from the south to mitigate the strong winds that were around at that time. So the plane made a 180 degree steep turn, the fire was now consuming the exterior of the plane and the plane left behind a dark streak of smoke across the sky. Their airplane started to fail them, the landing gear wouldn't work, the fuel dumps were erratic, and they had lost the pitch trim. That took away the little control that they had.

As the plane flew over towns and villages debris rained down on these towns starting fires on the ground. The controller was doing all that he could to help get the stricken plane down safely he said “Start final approach about 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) from the runway.” the crew replied with “We will do all we can”.
By some miracle they were lined up with the runway the controller said “Wind is 290 degrees, 22 kilometres per hour (14 mph). You are cleared for runway three-three.”

But Soon the plane was rising and falling, kind of like a sine wave. The plane pitched down for one last time, it impacted the forest in a slight left bank. The plane impacted the forest 3.5 miles