LOT Flight 5055
SP-LBG, the aircraft involved in the accident, at London Heathrow Airport in April 1987
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| Accident summary | |
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| Date | May 9, 1987 |
| Summary | Uncontained engine failure, in-flight fire, progressive electrical failure, loss of flight controls, engine manufacturing and design flaws |
| Site | Warsaw, Poland |
| Passengers | 172 |
| Crew | 11 |
| Fatalities | 183 (all) |
| Aircraft type | Ilyushin Il-62M |
| Aircraft name | Tadeusz Kościuszko |
| Operator | LOT Polish Airlines |
| Registration | SP-LBG |
| Flight origin | Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport, Poland |
| Destination | John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, U.S. |
 Pre-crash photos of the airliner at airliners.net
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LOT Flight 5055 was an Ilyushin Il-62M of LOT Polish Airlines that crashed in the late morning hours of Saturday, May 9, 1987. The event happened in the Kabaty Woods nature reserve on the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland. The flight prepared to leave from Warsaw to New York City's John F. Kennedy International airport when it encountered multiple catastrophic events with the numbers 1 and 2 engines as well as the elevator shortly after departure. All 183 passengers and crew on board perished in the crash. The accident was the deadliest of any involving an Ilyushin Il-62, the deadliest to occur on Polish soil, and the deadliest aviation accident of 1987. It was determined to have been caused by the disintegration of an engine shaft due to faulty bearings.
The aircraft was a 186-seat Ilyushin Il-62M built in the third quarter of 1983, registered SP-LBG and named Tadeusz Kościuszko, after the Polish military leader and national hero.
The captain was Zygmunt Pawlaczyk (59), with 19,745 flight hours' experience (5,542 on Ilyushin Il-62s), and a captain of the type from 11 May 1978. The first officer was Leopold Karcher (44); the remaining crew were flight engineer Wojciech Kłossek (43); the flight navigator Lesław Łykowski (47); the radio operator Lesław Bogdan (43); and Ryszard Chmielewski (53), a trainer of flight engineers on a routine observation of the progress of Kłossek. Chmielewski had been scheduled as a flight engineer on LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007, another Il-62 which had crashed seven years earlier, but had been ill and had switched shifts with a colleague.
The purser was Maria Berger-Sanderska (38); the other flight attendants were Hanna Chęcińska (35), Małgorzata Ostrowska (29), Beata Płonka (23), and Jolanta Potyra (40). Chęcińska was in the technical cabin-bay, between the engines, and probably either lost consciousness and burned in the fire or was sucked out of the aircraft after decompression; her body was never found despite an extensive search.
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Wikipedia