Talk:Korean Air Lines Flight 007/Archive 7


 * So, why not??? Why no warning? Why no attempt to capture plane? Apparently Osipovich said he had no tracers, but there were several fighters involved, and also as you say the possibility of radio contact. And this happened over hours.--EditorASC (talk) 13:48, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

the Hersh/ Ewing scenario and pilot awareness of deviation
The H/E scenario (insertion of the wrong coordinants to the INS) has to do with reason for the deviation, not with pilot awareness of deviation.Bert Schlossberg98.170.236.50 (talk) 08:56, 6 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, that sounds like a reasonable assumption. However, part of the H/E scenario is that the other crew members likely did know they were not on the correct course, but that they did the usual deference to the Captain bit, by not saying anything to him as "he must know what he is doing" because the culture at that airline discouraged telling the Captain that he might be doing someting wrong.


 * That sounds pretty outrageous, I know, but that kind of thinking was deeply ingrained in the old "the Captain is God" days, especially in some Asian cultures. If the scenario actually happened the way that Ewing constructed it, then the Captain did the very common thing, once they were established in climb and on the way to Bethel, using the AP HEADING SEL mode: he went back to the cabin to socialize with the passengers for a long period of time. That left the FO and the FE to try and make their reports as best as they could, with the plane gradually flying further and further north of the flight planned track.  The Captain left the cockpit, with the plane flying in that AP mode, and they were loath to change it, since they might have figured that he knew what he was doing and it would be very disrespectful to challenge him or suggest he did not know what he was doing.


 * That kind of failureof the other cockpit crew members reluctant to inform the Captain that he was doing it wrong, because you just don't say something like that to a Japanese Captianis why a JAL DC-8-63 landed in SFO bay, short of R28. The FO knew the Captain had not locked onto the glidslope, and was in fact descending parallel, but underneath the GS.  But he wasn't about to tell the Captain that.  He remained silent until the plane hit the water.


 * It is also why the FO on the KLM 747 did not jam on the brakes at Tenerife, when he knew his Captain was starting the takeoff, without proper TO clearance. That failure to override the Captain's actions, which were clearly wrong, caused the death by fire of 583 innocent passengers and crew.


 * There are many other historical cases of crashes that did not have to happen, and would not have happened, if the other crew members had intervened by overriding the Captain's bad or misguided decisions. Long article on that subject, at:


 * http://www.airlinesafety.com/editorials/editorial3.htm  EditorASC (talk) 10:29, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Bob, got your message and also your good letter, which is in line to be responded to. Thank you! what I now have to say may not fully relate to the section in question but I think it has something of a bearing and may be the explanation for the deviation as a whole and not just pilot knowledge of deviation. I wonder what you think. The pilot, Captain Park, of KAL 015, the sister flight 15 minutes behind KAL 007 and also on the way to Seoul, believed (he is now deceased), on the basis of long standing friendship with Capt Chun of KAL 007, that either the wrong coordinants were entered into the INS of KAL 007 while in ramp position at Anchorage, or the right coordinants, but while KAL 007 was already out of ramp position and already taxiing. He believes that Capt. Chun realized this when KAL 007 was already in flight and was presented with the choice of turning back (as 007 could not be "re coordinated" in flight), dumping costly fuel, possibly being demoted and fined, and otherwise hunmiliated, or going on ahead to Seoul, "winging it" on magnetic heading, and hoping for the best. Park believes that his friend chose the latter. How does it sound to you, Bob?98.170.236.50 (talk) 12:17, 7 October 2009 (UTC)Bert Schlossberg


 * I think that is a very likely scenario. I actually flew a trip (as a DC-10 SO), from ITO to SFO, where the pilots did exactly that, because they somehow got the KONA Lat Long, as their starting position into the INS (we had just completed a KOA-ITO leg), instead of the ramp coordinates for ITO. Here is what I wrote  on Sept 28th:


 * I can envision two other possibilities to explain why the AP remained in the heading mode:


 * 1. The Captain deliberately flew the plane in the AP heading mode, because he believed he could save both time and fuel by flying to the right of the planned INS course.


 * 2. Both the Captain and the FO failed to correctly set up the present position of the INS, while the plane was parked at the gate. There is a detailed check list procedure that both pilots have to run, to ensure that does not happen. But, sometimes pilots are lazy and they fail to run that checklist. If they don't get the present position right, then when they are airborne, they will have no valid course to follow in flight. They cannot reprogram the INS computers once the plane is moving, since any course depends on starting from the correct present position, before the plane moves. There is only one safe and legal solution when that happens: They have to dump a lot of fuel and then come back and land at the originating station. Then park at the gate and start the INS programming, with the correct present position, all over again. One United Airlines flight actually had to do that. Needless to say, any pilot caught with his pants down like that, would have to think up some ridiculous fairy tale to explain to the passengers why they had to come back and land and go back to the gate, before trying it a second time. Not to mention that he would be in real deep doo doo, with the management of his company, since that would involve considerable expenses for fuel, extra crew time pay and maybe a lot of missed connections at destination.


 * If the second scenario is what happened, then I would expect the Captain to try and "wing it," by flying the plane on heading mode the entire way, while attempting to do calculations as to how close he was to the planned INS course line. He wouldn't be willing to lose face by admitting they had made such a major screw up, by coming back, dumping fuel and landing at Anchorage, to start all over.


 * I actually witnessed that many years ago, when I was a DC-10 Second Officer. While I was outside doing an external preflight of the airplane, the Captain and FO were setting up the three INS computers with present position and installing the flight plan. But, when we got airborne, it became evident at the first checkpoint that we were at least 20 miles or more off the desired track line, even though they were tracking the line that was displayed by the INS computers. That was determined by the Vortac crosscheck on the first position point, which was still in range of that station on the east coast of the big island of Hawaii. And, the Captain and FO figured they could "wing it and adjust their error from the erroneous course they were following, so that they would be pretty near the real course line in the flight plan, which was not correctly displayed in the INS computers. They flew the whole trip from Hawaii to SFO that way, and they apparently weren't too far off, because the radar controller did not say anything, when we first appeared on radar, about 200 miles from SFO.


 * So, the statement that the KAL pilots did not detect that they were in the AP heading mode the entire trip, is not one that can be verified. It is pure speculation that they did not know that. EditorASC (talk) 10:44, 28 September 2009 (UTC)  [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Socrates2008/Archive_2]

EditorASC (talk) 14:31, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Bob, following along on your suggestion that it would be pure speculation that the pilots were unaware of their deviation, I tried to follow that line of thought and came up, as a pure layman in the field, with the following indications that the pilots could have known of their deviation. None of this is original with me but is sort of compilations of various published sources. Some of this is included without much detail in our ariticle but I have not edited much as it might have been considered "conspiracy". What do you think of it, and could you correct even the laymans terminology. If it really is sound, I think I would edit in some (or more than I have already) as, I say, the ideas are already in some of the various books. The following is taken from my book:

What could the pilots of KAL 007 have known of their course deviation?

From Bethel and on, alert pilots could have known much—starting with the Horizonal Situation Indicator. The Horizontal Situation Indicator’s needle would have alerted the pilots of their course deviation. This is because the cockpit HSI console needle, capable

[8 Korean Airlines required use of the North Pacific Operations Manual, which stipulates that the last land-based navigational aid for oceanic flights (Bethel) be used to verify INS accuracy. 9 Aeronautical Knowledge, Paul E. Illman, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1995, p. 281. 10 After Bethel, KAL 007’s waypoints were not on its “straight line” flight trajectory (the Great Circle). If KAL 007 had no DME, it would have had to follow radials (like “connect the dots”) to its planned destination, rather than following the planned straight line trajectory. With DME, the pilots, once having intercepted the radial, would know the distance to the emitting VOR station, and could calculate the straight line trajectory.]

- 4 - of showing deviation only up to eight miles, would be “pegged” all the way to the side. The pilots, thus, should have known that they were at least eight miles off course!11 Despite this, strangely enough, at 13:49, the pilots were reporting that they were on course! “007, Bethel at forty niner.” And so, fifty minutes after takeoff, military radar at King Salmon, Alaska acquired KAL 007 at more than 12.6 miles off course. It had exceeded its permissible leeway of deviation by six times! (Two nautical miles an hour error is the permissible drift from course set by INS.) Furthermore, pilot and copilot should also have been aware of the aircraft’s serious deviation because now, much more than 12 miles off course, KAL 007 was too far off course for the pilots to make their required Very High Frequency (VHF) radio reports, and had to relay these reports via KAL Flight 015, just minutes behind it and oncourse (KAL 007,increasingly off course, would have to rely on KAL 015 three times to transmit its reports to Anchorage Air Traffic Control). That alone should have alerted them. At one point in this section of its flight, (14:43 GMT) KAL 007 put a call through a navigational “hookup,” the International Flight Service Station on High Frequency. Flight 007, now too distant to speak directly with Anchorage Controller through Very High Frequency, was transmitting its message indirectly using High Frequency.12 The message was a change in the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) for the next waypoint called NEEVA—delaying by four minutes the ETA that KAL 015 had previously relayed on behalf of KAL 007. Since a revised ETA could only be calculated by means of readout information presented by KAL 007’s Inertial Navigation Systems Control Display unit, pilot and copilot were once again presented with the opportunity of verifying their position and becoming aware of their enormous deviation. Halfway between waypoint NABIE and the next required reporting waypoint, NEEVA, KAL 007 passed through the southern portion of the United States Air Force NORAD (North American Air Defense) buffer zone. This zone, monitored intensively by U. S. Intelligence assets, lies north of Romeo 20, KAL 007’s designated air route, and is off-limits to civilian aircraft. KAL was apparently undetected—or, if detected, unreported.

[11 An aircraft HSI generally has an image of a plane directly above the Horizontal Situation Indicator’s needle when the aircraft is on course. A needle pointing to the left or to the right of the image would indicate that the plane is deviated left or right of the course. KAL 007’s HSI’s needle would have been pegged all the way to the right (North). ICAO expanded on the Horizontal Situation Indicator’s capability of showing course deviation. The pilots could have known that they were off course by looking at the Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI) in front of each of them. Though the HSI was primarily designed to show the aircraft’s situation with regard to the horizon, the 747’s HSI contained an indicator to register deviation from plotted course. “Indications [of being on course] available to the crew would have been a reducing or zero track bar displacement with the HSI display set to INS and a similar reducing or zero cross track error on the CDUs [consoles]. There would have been a similar effect with the VOR track displacement…”—ICAO report 1993, p. 42, sect. 2.4.4. 12 At waypoint NABIE, KAL 007 was too far north to make radar contact with the Very High Frequency Air Traffic Control relay station on St. Paul’s Island. KAL 015 relayed for KAL 007.]

- 5 - And so KAL 007 continued its night journey, ever increasing its deviation—60 nautical miles off course at waypoint NABIE, 100 nautical miles off course at waypoint NUKKS, and 160 nautical miles off course at waypoint NEEVA13—until it penetrated Kamchatka’s borders.98.170.236.50 (talk) 21:49, 7 October 2009 (UTC)Bert Schlossberg


 * Bert: I am working on a reply. I will post it on your talk page.  May take a day or two. EditorASC (talk) 10:37, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * For many aspects of this incident, the facts are simply not known. Even parts of the ICAO's reports are speculative, so speculation is an unfortunate aspect of this case that we have to deal with.  However we should be very careful here of us WP editors doing our own specualtion in the article.  In other words, we should leave the speculation to someone reliable and be very sure to have a citation for it.  And where speculation is not attributable to a reliable source, yes, it should be properly cited or removed. Socrates2008 ( Talk ) 10:44, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I couldn't agree more. The H/E scenario is discussed in great detail in the Hersh book.  Since he is a Pulitzer Prize reporter, I assume that constitutes a "reliable" source. EditorASC (talk) 15:19, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Got it!Bert Schlossberg (talk) 13:04, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Again, I got two copies of the '93 report. the first I had gotten through the Families of the victims association. The second, a number of years later simply on request to ICAO in Montreal. I di d not tell them that I was a family member of two of the passengers, simply requesting a copy as an interested person. I think it can probably done the same way today. I know that I am not the only one editing this article that has a copy, as once in a while I see an edit from the report with the exact reference, page, section numbers, etc.Bert Schlossberg (talk) 02:47, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

The third decade
I have restored the phrase "the third decade" in the 4th paragraph of the Initial 1983 ICAO section. I agree that it doesn't make much sense as translated but that is how the document appears as handed over by the Russains to ICAO and translated to Enlish. It is actually a quote from a document. It is probably best to retain it rather than the 3 dots as it does show that the Soviet military reported to the civilian echelon a date later (about 3 weeks) for the finding of the Flight recorders and plane than we know from the civilian divers interviews (first civilian dive went down Sept. 15 plus the military divers, according to their words, went down even earlier than theyBert Schlossberg (talk) 21:41, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Render.
I don't think this picture is suitable. Ofcourse it is good, that somebody extended efforts of improving Wikipedia father then finding already created materials but creating their own. But I don't think it is adequate. IMO.

1. It's is not an acctual foto or frame /screenshot/ from some official investigation computer simulation. So it is not a realable source of information.

2. I believe that author means that this is THAT VERY Boeing in its THAT VERY LAST flight. If so - then this CG /Comp. Graph./ possibly is OR, cos there is no info which windowses where lighted and which where not. And is hardly possible that aircraft was visible as well as it can be seen on this pic, or if those light sources on tail where realy so diamond-like bright and so on. And this can be decieving to the viewer.

3. Plus picture itself contain some glitches like dark spot over the wing root, mirror-like reflections and low polys.

By myself I am a fan of 3D CG too and once have an idea to add such selfmade pic to article that miss them, but decide not to do so because of reasons similar to those above.

As an advice to the author - there are two ways of dealing with such "glass reflections". 1 - to learn more and tweak with materials and textures and lights. 2 - is to swith to Vray renderer for 3D MAX - that is much easyer and more fun. --Oleg Str (talk) 11:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe a lot of this isn't an issue because the image is clearly stated to be an artist's depiction. I do see how a reader might wonder why it was so difficult to identify the aircraft in the middle of the night if it was actually so brightly lit; a disclaimer beneath the image, next to the note about being an artist's depiction, would take care of that. If you feel that you can make an image of higher quality, by all means do so, but unless we can obtain a free photograph of HL7442 (and there appear to be only 3 or so images of the aircraft in Korean Airlines colors available), this image or one like it is probably the best we can have in the lead. AniRaptor2001 (talk) 15:43, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to reiterate - the interceptor pilot has already acknowledged that he knew it was a Boing passenger plane by the two rows of windows, "I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing. I knew this was a civilian plane." Since it was still dark out, he must have seen the two rows because there were lights within the aircraft that were visible. So I think the lighting of the picture is not an issueBert Schlossberg (talk) 23:01, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

S-a-k-h-a-l-i-n-s-k-a again
I won't change it back again to what it should be, but here I will note for accuracie's sake - the quote has the speeling out "S-a-k-h-a-l-i-n-s-k-a" after the name of the Island, and there is no sense in dropping it out. If it is ommitted, there should at leawst be the... to indicate it.Bert Schlossberg (talk) 16:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

S-a-k-h-a-l-i-n-s-k-a-
I have re-edited in the S-a-k-h-l-i-n-s-k-a as Orville Brockman, spokesman for Washington D.C. FAA, had spelled out the name of the Island to Tommy Toles, press secretary of Larry McDonald. That call was recorded and is in the books that speak about the safe landing on Sakhalin report. And that is the way it is in Pearson's book which is the reference to this quote. Bert Schlossberg —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.170.236.50 (talk) 02:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)