LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 hijacking the Republic"), a crime under GDR law. Ruske and Tiede then concluded that they were trapped and that prison awaited them if they returned to East Germany. So they developed a plan to hijack a plane headed for East Berlin's Schönefeld Airport and force a landing at the U.S. Air Force base at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin. They bought a toy starting pistol at a Polish flea market, and then booked three tickets on LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 from Gdańsk, Poland, to East Berlin. On 30 August 1978, Tiede and Ruske hijacked a Polish LOT Tupolev Tu-134 airliner
LOT Polish Airlines Flight 5055 involving an Ilyushin Il-62, and to date, it remains the deadliest aviation crash in Polish history. It was determined to have been caused by the disintegration of an engine shaft due to faulty bearings. The aircraft was a 186-seat Ilyushin Il-62M built in the third quarter of 1983, registered SP-LBG and named "Tadeusz Kościuszko", after the Polish military leader and national hero. All of the crew members were Polish. The captain, Zygmunt Pawlaczyk, was 59 years old, with 19,745 flight hours' experience (5,542 on Ilyushin Il-62s), and a captain of the type from 11 May 1978. The first officer, Leopold