What REALLY happened Korean Flight 007??

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It’s the hot summer of 1983, and the cold war rages.

Ronald Reagan is US president, Michael Jackson’s Thriller is at the top of the charts, and Pacman is all the rage.

The threat of nuclear war looms large, and every political football risks being used as a reason to whip out the nuclear football.

This almost comic juxtaposition of pop, and politics formed the backdrop against which Korean Airlines flight 7 took to the skies above New York on August 31st.

On this night, in an atmosphere thick with cold war tension, an incredible series of events would unfold out over the Pacific Ocean, which would bring the world to the brink of war.

This is the incredible story of Korean Airlines flight 7.

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Big thanks to David for his knowledge and input on B747 systems, and historical aviation context for the video.

Ronald Reagan Footage Courtesy of Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

This video was created with reference to publicly available sources:

Music licensed through Epidemic Sound

[philmorris]

"Asleep at the wheel" is the phrase that best describes this crew. So many mistakes and failures to pay attention to detail is bordering on criminal negligence. 🌵🌵🌵

[pemegangkoencisyurga]

My driving instructor advised me that sometimes drivers' mistakes on the road are not because they lack experience, but because they feel they understand everything. I think this advice works for everything.

[matt_hayward]

I read a case study a while ago about korean airlines. Korean culture is quite complex and you are never meant never to question your elders or superiors. Which led to 2 or 3 fatal crashes. You have to wonder if it played a role here too.

[bossfight]

How badly and critically this flight deviated from its main flight path is horrifying and what’s even worse is that an experienced flight crew was completely unaware of their disastrous error.

[qzwxecrv]

Considering how many year’s experience these guys had on this route, I would say “experience laziness”

“I know this route so we’ll and done it so many times, I know what I’m doing. I can do it in my sleep”

I once heard someone once say “it isn’t the new guys that get hurt or cause errors/mistakes, rather the experienced guys do because they get lazy in their duties

[LesAtlas]

This was almost 40 years ago. I was a new assistant professor and a very professional and dedicated aviation investigator showed up at my office with a tape of the KAL 007 last transmission to Narita airport in Tokyo. It was HF radio, weak and distorted, but he could have been saying "rapid depressurization." We worked really hard trying to make that voice more intelligible, but we couldn't. But we were able to synchronize this recording with other recordings, such as from Adak US Air Force base in Alaska and from KAL 015. We made a composite tape from these. I hope the investigators, US, ICAO, and/or Russian Federation were helped by our composite tape. Back then there were so many conspiracy theories that I lost track. There were articles and books such as: Pearson, *Kal 007 - The Cover Up* and Brun, *Incident at Sakhalin.* There was even a conference at my University to discuss the various theories. Your video nicely covered the 2 most likely theories as to why this flight was tragically off course.

[jfugal]

My parents were on Flight 15. They talked about it when I was really young. They had interacted with those passengers in the terminal in Anchorage. I’ve always wanted to hear a good breakdown of what happened. Thanks for the great content!!

[RareFroggy]

I can't lie, I love these longer videos

[shadowexecutive]

I remember when this happened and thought it was strange that a commercial airline with the flight number "007" would be shot down for spying. It was a very disturbing event and during a very turbulent and dangerous time.

[Jennx]

We were stationed @ Anderson AFB in Guam when this happened. Dad was a SAC B-52 radar navigator, the perfect military specimen to fly around with nuclear weapons. He never let on about the stress/pressures he was working under as they were top secret but we went from having him home between alerts (twice a month) to he wasn’t home the next morning when we woke up & was gone for months. Man I wish I could ask Dad about this specific time period, sadly he passed very young at 56.

[mohammadnafisidraque]

I am a student Pilot and I was studying for my Instrumentation ATPL exam, and was trying to understand the PFD and Flight mode anunciator panel. I was having a hard time and just decided to take a break and watch a documentary. And you Sir, in your documentary, describe the working principals behind each event so beautifully, I was amazed. Couldn't have come at a better time !!!! Cheers man and thanks !!

[martini.z]

Just want to say you're my absolute favorite aviation YouTuber. The suspense you put in your narration combined with the music and visuals are astounding. Keep it up!

[marvinkigame]

How the crew of flight 007 slept on the job commiting small mistakes and negligence is beyond me.. I feel sorry for the unfortunate souls.

[ErinJeanette]

I love watching these videos and feel so bad for it because of the loss of life but my grandpa who I still live with is an airplane mechanic and owns a small plane so I just spent all new years eve telling him all the high level info about aviation disasters and he knows absolutely everything about everything I bring up, always matching your videos it's so fun to talk with him he's so smart. I used to do flight simulator on late 90s or early 2000s on our computer and I would just crash all the time cuz I suck, but I loved playing and trying

[XQoozMii]

Safety is written in blood. Then, now and forever.

[davidhynd]

It's very obvious that there's a whole lot of hard work goes into researching and producing these videos. The quality of the visuals seems to improve with each new video and your diction is exceptionally clear and easy to understand. If this channel isn't the best aviation channel on YouTube, and it may well be, it's certainly among the best. Great work. Thanks for the video.

[kimmuckenfuss]

Thanks for such a detailed breakdown of this tragedy. I think the main failure to stay on course was straight-up complacency. These pilots were, IMO, way too relaxed & laid back with a flight plan so near Soviet airspace at that time in history. It is really unbelievable how they missed so many cues...especially when they couldn't reach ATC by radio more than once. For the large loss of life on this flight, it is frustrating to know the pilots were so wrapped up in their own world.

[pwgearedturbofan]

I'd venture that negligence over the whole trip kind of makes sense. Certain aspects of Korean culture, from my understanding, seem to be focused on not rocking the boat and keeping to appearances. Look at the behavior around the Sewol Ferry disaster. A ferry full of children capsized, and one thing rescuers tried to do was to connect an air hose under the boat to supply them with air while they worked on another plan. The divers were unable to do that, but they claimed that they succeeded because the president was watching. One, or some of the pilots may have done something similar. They may have made a mistake but did not want to announce that for fear of causing trouble and looking bad in front of the other pilots, so they just kept quiet because everything was good up until then.

[sadiqjohnny]

It seems incredible that when the flight was cleared to BETHEL VOR, the pilots did not fill in the INS with the BETHEL Lat and Long, the use the INS to take them there. It is impossible to cross the Pacific or the Atlantic without cross checking the 3 INS systems at each way point and check any cross track error if you are following SOPs. BETHEL could have been tuned on the on board VORs at as well so that it would register when in range. When flying on an INS track, even and you drift off the track that was inserted a flashing light will warn you that the plane is off track by 10 nm or more. My guess is this: On the older versions of the INS the control switch, after putting in the present position, was kept in ALIGN mode. This switch was on the pilots' panels just above their heads when facing forward. Before starting engines this swich was moved to NAV position for the INS navigation system to function. forgetting to do this would cause all 3 INS to go off. It would take a further 18 minutes to realign the INS's and cause an embarrasing delay. To avoid this the pilots may have put the INS into a mode where theynwould get their Attitude Indicator but no navigation infromation. For an ocean flight this would have been a very unwise decision and the 18 minute delay should have been accepted. Now they would have to fly in HEADING mode and trust to the flight plan winds as being accurate. A huge error, if they were in this condition, would be to not overfly BETHEL VOR and get a positive fix. As they continued the error when flying on HEADING mode increased. In this condition, and knowing that they could enter a Soviet sensitive area with all its dangers, they could have used their weather radar (2 of them) to ange down to pick up the Kamchaka penninsula as the only land that would be near their route. These radars had a range of 300 miles for weather targets and would certainly have picked up land from 100 nm away. They would have had ample time to turn south to avoid Kamchaka. This tragedy was due to gross errors on the part of the aircrew, Contributing to this was the Boeing 747 check list that called for switching off the Logo light on the tail fin after passing 10, 000 ft in climb and on again when descending through 10 000 ft. Perhaps seeing the Logo of an airliner might have given the Soviet Air Force pilots a reason to be hesitant to open fire.After this I always kept the logo light on my aircraft all the time in flight. Capt. "Johnny" Sadiq. Flew the 747 -200 for 15 years and was a Chief Pilot and Instructor on the type with 7500 hours in command on that aircraft.

[jose.damiani]

I think another important thing bearing consideration is whether the pilots had a history of ignoring intended fly paths for the "shortest possible" route.
This has probably already been explored by investigators, but I haven't seen it mentioned before and it might be an indicator as to whether or not this was an uncommon occurrence or not.