Captain Zygmunt Pawlaczyk of LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 conveyed a harrowing goodbye over the aircraft’s speaker system: “Good night! Goodbye! Bye, we’re dying!”
The final moments aboard a doomed passenger aircraft were captured in a spine-chilling final transmission from the pilot just seconds before the devastating crash that killed everyone on board.
Captain Zygmunt Pawlaczyk of LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 delivered a heart-wrenching farewell over the plane’s intercom: “Dobranoc! Do widzenia! Czesc, giniemy!” which translates to the bone-chilling words, “Good night! Goodbye! Bye, we’re dying!”.
The ill-fated Ilyushin II-62M was travelling from Warsaw to New York on May 9, 1987, with a scheduled fuel stop before continuing to San Francisco.
However, all 172 passengers and 11 crew perished when the aircraft plummeted into the Kabaty Woods nature reserve near Warsaw 56 minutes after departure, becoming Poland’s worst aviation disaster and the deadliest incident involving an Ilyushin II-62M. Mass tragedies like this have become less common in recent decades despite increasing flight numbers, and yet last month, 260 people died when an Air India flight failed to ascend after takeoff.
Air traffic control recordings preserved the cockpit’s last words at 11.12am local time.
Captain Pawlaczyk, aged 59 with an extensive 19,745 flight hours under his belt, commanded a crew of Polish crew members who perished either from fire or were thrown from the aircraft during the sudden loss of cabin pressure.
That tragic day saw 172 people on board: 155 Polish nationals and 17 Americans.
The doomed voyage commenced with air traffic control directing the crew to ascend to 5,500m altitude as rapidly as possible. When the crew pushed the engines to maximum power for take-off, the faulty bearings in the second engine reached a catastrophic temperature of 1800 degrees and failed completely, resulting in the shaft’s explosive destruction.
The flight crew swiftly recognised that both the elevator controls had been compromised and the engines were no longer functioning.
Travellers were reportedly aware of their perilous predicament, with Halina Domeracka, 58, penning a haunting message in her New Testament: “9.05.1987 The aircraft’s damaged… God, what will happen now… Halina Domeracka, R. Tagore St. Warsaw..”
Following the devastating accident, the nation held two days of national mourning, whilst international leaders, including Polish-born Pope John Paul II, conveyed deep grief over the disaster.
The service remained operated by the Ilyushin II-62M until 1989, before switching to the inaugural Boeing 767 and later upgrading to the Boeing 787 in 2012.