LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 (1969)

LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 was an Antonov An-24 aircraft, registration SP-LTF, operating a scheduled passenger flight from Warsaw to Krakow Balice airport. It crashed into a mountain on 2 April 1969 at 16:08 local time (UTC+1) during a snowstorm. All 53 people on board were killed.

Flight

The aircraft took off at 15:20 local time for a 55-minute flight to Krakow's Balice Airport. The captain was Czesław Doliński.

At 15:49, the first officer received instructions to descend to 1500 m and get in touch with Balice control tower after passing Jędrzejów, less than 80 km north of Krakow. A military radar registered the aircraft at that time at 4000 m altitude. The pilots informed controllers in Okęcie and Balice when the plane had passed Jędrzejów VOR, but caused confusion by providing three different passage times a few minutes apart. Shortly thereafter and before 16:00, the captain (who by then had taken over control) called Balice, gave his altitude as 3700 m, received the local weather report, and then was instructed to descend to 1200 m.

At 16:01, the aircraft was recorded at 2400 m and descending. In the next eight minutes, a series of radio exchanges took place between the aircraft and the Balice radar operator, with the captain repeatedly asking for his fix and reporting problems with the beacon signal, and the operator asking for the aircraft's position and altitude to help him find the aircraft on the radar screen. At 16:05, the aircraft was noted near Maków Podhalański, some 50 km past Krakow, at a height of 1200 m. The last transmission received from the airplane was, "Left turn to further...-" at 16:08.17. Seconds after that, radio contact was lost. The plane subsequently crashed on the northern slope of Polica mountain, near Zawoja, southern Poland, at an altitude of 1200 m.