The final moments on board a doomed passenger plane were marked by a chilling last message from the pilot just seconds before the tragic crash that claimed all lives on board.
Captain Zygmunt Pawlaczyk of LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 conveyed a harrowing goodbye over the aircraft’s speaker system: “Dobranoc! Do widzenia! Cześć, giniemy!” which in English spells out the haunting words, “Good night! Goodbye! Bye, we’re dying!”.
The doomed Ilyushin II-62M was en route from Warsaw to New York on May 9, 1987, with planned refuelling before heading to San Francisco.
Tragically, all 172 passengers and 11 crew members died when the aircraft crashed into the Kabaty Woods nature reserve near Warsaw 56 minutes after takeoff, marking the darkest day for Polish aviation and the most catastrophic event ever involving an Ilyushin II-62M.
Air traffic control transcripts captured the cockpit’s final communication at 11.12 am local time.
Captain Pawlaczyk, with an impressive 19,745 total flight hours behind him at the age of 59, led a crew of Polish nationals who met their end either engulfed by flames or ejected from the plane amidst the suddent decompression.
On that fateful flight, 172 souls were aboard: 155 from Poland and 17 from the United States. The ill-fated journey began with air traffic control’s instruction for the crew to climb to an altitude of 5,500m as swiftly as possible
After the crew applied maximum thrust to the engines for ascent, the defective bearings in engine number two overheated to a critical 1800 degrees and catastrophically failed, causing the shaft to explode.
The crew quickly realised that the elevator control systems were compromised and the engines rendered inoperative.
Passengers were reportedly conscious of the dire situation. Halina Domeracka, 58, inscribed a chilling note in her New Testament: “9.05.1987 The aircraft’s damaged… God, what will happen now… Halina Domeracka, R. Tagore St. Warsaw..”
In the aftermath of the tragic crash, the country observed two days of national mourning, with international figures, including Pope John Paul II, who was Polish, expressing profound sorrow over the tragedy.
The route continued to be serviced by the Ilyushin II-62M until 1989, after which it transitioned to the first Boeing 767 and subsequently to the Boeing 787 in 2012.