LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 "Good night! Goodbye! Bye, we're dying!"). All 172 passengers and 11 crew died as the aircraft broke apart and crashed. After the crash of the Il-62 operating as LOT Polish Airlines Flight 007, the airline had started replacing its Ilyushin Il-62s with the more modernized Ilyushin Il-62M version. These had newer engines (Soloviev D-30 instead of Kuznetsov NK-8), but both of these turbofan engines shared the same critical point — low pressure turbine and engine shaft design and construction. According to the Polish investigatory commission, the cause of the crash was the disintegration of an engine shaft due to faulty
Government contract flight most routine military charter flights. The government receives an extremely economical source of emergency capacity as well as reasonable costs for peacetime military transportation. Most American government contract flights are sponsored by the military. While many of them are used to move cargo, some are operated as scheduled airline services. These flights are virtually identical to standard airline flights, complete with flight attendants, meal service, and in-flight movies. A contract flight returning from an overseas area is often referred to as a freedom bird, since it usually carries military members who are returning to the United States after what is