Commercial Flights That Were Deliberately Shot Down

Barely months ago, were we deeply saddened by the gruesome plights suffered by those 228 people whose lives were devoured to nothingness by the Air France Flight 447 disaster?  In the absence of the black box, investigators said that the aircraft encountered a turbulent weather conditions, and possibly breaking up the plane, killing and spilling the passengers into the abysmal Atlantic. Accidental air disasters like this lingers in people’s memory, how much more those similar events but were deliberately done. Here are some of the grimmest cases of air disasters which were done deliberately.

 Korean Air Flights 007

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Korean Air Flights 007 was a civilian airliner that was shot down by Soviet Jet Interceptors when a navigational error brought the plane flying over the former Union of Soviet prohibited air space – over Sakhalin Island. The aircraft was en route from New York City via Anchorage to Seoul.  It was later learned that the plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan, just west of the hostile Sakhalin air space. All passengers and crews of 269 aboard including Lawrence Macdonald, a member of the U.S. congress were killed. The Union of Soviet initially denied the U.S. accusation but later admitted shooting the aircraft down. The turned out to be highly sensitive for it was associated with the heating Cold War. The controversy surrounding the incident was never fully resolved. The release of the black box by Boris Yeltsin in 1991 ended up shedding some light only. For the loss of lives, the Union of Soviet regretted but never apologized.

Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114

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Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was a regularly scheduled flight from Tripoli to Cairo, Egypt via Benghazi. Equipment failures and bad weather brought the plane off course and strayed into Israeli – controlled airspace over the Sinai Peninsula. Minutes later, two Israeli F-4 Phantoms intercepted the aircraft to conduct an investigation and in the effort to end the situation peacefully, the Israeli pilots made gestures and direct contact with the crew of the Boeing aircraft to follow them and land at Refidim air base. However, due to the belligerent relation between Libya and Israel at the time, the crews of the plane ( the co -pilot was Libyan) refused to follow their instruction,  indicating they would go on flying. The Israeli pilots made their last warning by dipping their aircraft wings to no avail.  Not to destroy but just to cripple the aircraft and under the auspices of David Elazar, the Israeli Chief of Staff, the Israeli pilots fired at the Libyan Airliner that quickly became unfit to continue flying.  So the pilots forced to do an emergency landing on an uneven terrain covered with sand dunes.  And when the plane finally settled, only 5 people (including the co-pilot) of 113 people survived, killing 108 of them.  After denials of the Government, the Israeli forces justified their move, claiming that the aircraft was a security threat. Israel at the time was in the state of war with Egypt, and was receiving threats that the Black September will crush a plane on Israel loaded with explosives. Despite these justifications, Israel was censured by twenty member nations of the International Civil Aviation Organization. The United States found Israel’s reasoning unacceptable and condemned the incident.