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 from
the runway at warsaw. The words spoken by the crew were recorded
by the CVR, they said “Good night! Goodbye! Bye, we're dying!” None of the 183 members of flight 5055 made
it. The wreck was littered over the forests of
Warsaw as a silent witness to the crash, however if you listened hard enough they had a story
to tell. For example they found that in the final moments
of the flight most of the people had moved to the front of the plane, this changed the
center of gravity of the plane and was partly responsible for the final dive , in addition
to that they found the horizontal stabilizers of the plane warped, this had happened in
flight and this changed the aerodynamic properties of the plane and therefore contributed to
the dive. But what had caused the fire onboard? Looking at the flight data recorder data they
saw that the 12 -15 seconds before the failure of engine number two the fuel consumption
of the plane shot up for a bit and after that it went down, Soon after that the engine failed,
the failure of engine number 2 set off a bunch of other things, the cabin began to depressurize,
The elevator system failed , Infact by the end of the flight the control column positions
and the elevators were not mirroring each other, indicating that they werent linked
and on top of that the uncontained failure of engine number two damaged engine number
one very badly. So what caused engine number two to fail so
catastrophically? They found that the low pressure turbine had
failed, Because of the ball bearings used. The engines were designed to use 26 ball bearings
inside the low pressure turbine but this engine only had 13, half the required number. Remember how the pilots needed to climb really
quickly to 18,000 feet very quickly to avoid some military aircraft? Well to do that they pushed all 4 engines
to max power. When they did that the 13 ball bearings were
doing the work of 26, they were being put through something that they were not designed
for. This caused the ball bearings to heat up due
to friction. They got hot, very hot, they reached 1000
degrees celsius or 1800 degrees fahrenheit. This caused the shaft that the low pressure
turbine was connected to become very weak and it eventually failed. The low pressure turbine was now no longer
mechanically connected to the compressor and so the turbine could spin up to speeds that
it was never designed for. The turbine spun faster and faster until the
centrifugal force ripped it apart. Shards of the broken blade peppered the rear
section of the plane, including engine number one. This is what started a fire in the baggage
compartment at the back of the plane. How do you have half the number of ball bearings
than the design called for? The supply of ball bearings to the airplane
manufacturer was delayed and so they built the engines with half the amount of ball bearings
so that they could meet contractual obligations, half the rollers meant that the generated
heat would be concentrated in a smaller space, and if that heat builds up, you have an uncontained
engine failure. Now you might be wondering, if they had a
fire onboard why didn't they just land at modlin and get it over with, yes warsaw had
better equipment and that played a part in their decision making. But the crew were mislead, As the flames started
to spread in the back of the plane, their fire warning system had failed due to the
damage to the electrical system, they were unaware of the fire, at first they were under
the impression that they had collided with something, maybe another plane and so they
hadn't really considered the possibility of a fire. At the time that they made the decision to
go back to Warsaw their plane was relatively controllable and Warsaw's runway was the best
option when considering the winds at the time. The approach to runway 33 at Warsaw was obstacle
free, due to these reasons they chose to go back to Warsaw even though it meant flying
further. The really sad thing is that had they not
applied full power the ball bearings in engine number two probably would have held out for
the flight and they would have made it back safely. So what do you think? Do you think that there's a version of events
where flight 5055 could have made it back on the ground safely?
