On This Day in 1978: KAL Flight 902

We Americans tend—at least as far as our borders’ air defense is concerned—to ask questions first and then shoot if necessary.

Not so the Russians, who seem to shoot first and then ask questions, the latest example being Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, that according to Wikipedia was “a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-controlled forces on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine.  All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed, making it the deadliest airliner shoot-down incident to date.”

Frankly, and in no way is this intended to be a political statement, as chaotic as America’s Chinese Surveillance Balloon shoot-down decision-making seemed, I still personally prefer America’s way and its more tempered approach.  The Russians are too trigger-happy.

And here’s another example way back on this day on 1978.  Although 46 years ago, most of these folks were extraordinarily lucky.  They survived.  On April 20, 1978 according to History.com, “Soviet fighter aircraft forced a Korean Air Lines passenger jet to land in the Soviet Union after the jet veered into Russian airspace. Two people were killed and several others injured when the jet made a rough landing on a frozen lake about 300 miles south of Murmansk.

The KAL Korean Air Lines Flight 902 jet, a Boeing 707, after making an emergency landing in the Soviet Union on the frozen Korpijärvi Lake near the Finnish border. 

Courtesy Wikipedia.

“”The jet was on a flight from Paris to Seoul when the incident occurred. Soviet officials claimed that the plane, which usually flew over the northern polar regions to reach Seoul, suddenly veered sharply to the east and penetrated Russian airspace. Soviet jets intercepted the passenger plane and ordered it to land. Instead of going to the airfield indicated by the Soviet jets, however, the KAL flight made a very rough landing on a frozen lake south of Murmansk. Two passengers were killed and several others were injured during the landing. A short time later, the Soviet Union allowed a civilian American aircraft to retrieve the survivors.

“U.S. officials were confused about what had gone wrong with the KAL flight, and Soviet officials were not extraordinarily helpful in clearing up matters. South Korea claimed that “navigational errors” were to blame for the plane flying so far off course. Aviation experts, however, doubted that “errors” of that magnitude would occur in such a sophisticated aircraft or that navigation problems could account for the plane’s wildly inaccurate flight pattern. All that could be said for certain was that the episode once again demonstrated the Soviet Union’s strict adherence to the protection of its airspace. Since the end of World War II, a number of civilian and military aircraft had been driven away, forced to land, or shot down by the Soviet air force. The Russian policy would have even more tragic consequences on September 1, 1983, when Soviet jets shot down KAL Flight 007 after it veered 300 miles off course and flew over the Soviet Union–nearly 270 people died in that crash.”