LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 accident's cause was similar to that of LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007's crash seven years earlier. After the disaster of Flight 007, the Polish investigatory commission established that its engine shaft disintegration was the result of metal fatigue; improper alloy preparation resulting in a defective mechanism which was less resistant to fatigue; and a faulty design of the engine shaft. Detection of these faults was possible only after complete disassembly of the engine and detailed analysis of all its elements, and as such was beyond the capabilities of aircraft maintenance personnel. These concerns were addressed by the Polish Government's Special
Airline codes has been in place for 20 years. The codes issued to date comply with IATA Resolution 762, which provides for only two characters. These codes thus comply with the current airline designator standard, but use only a limited subset of its possible range. There are three types of designator: unique, numeric/alpha and controlled duplicate. IATA airline designators are used to identify an airline for commercial purposes in reservations, timetables, tickets, tariffs, air waybills and in telecommunications. A flight designator is the concatenation of the airline designator, xx(a), and the numeric flight number, n(n)(n)(n), plus an optional one-letter "operational suffix" (a).