 The Finnair McDonnell Douglas DC-10 aircraft involved in the incident. | |
| Incident | |
|---|---|
| Date | 23 December 1987 (1987-12-23) |
| Summary | Alleged attempted missile attack, near miss |
| Site | Edgeøya,Svalbard, Norway |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | McDonnell-Douglas DC-10-30ER |
| Operator | Finnair |
| Registration | OH-LHC / N345HC |
| Flight origin | Narita International Airport,Tokyo, Japan |
| Destination | Helsinki-Vantaa Airport,Vantaa, Finland |
| Occupants | 219 |
| Passengers | 201 |
| Crew | 18 |
| Fatalities | 0 |
| Survivors | 219 |
Finnair Flight 915 (AY915) was a scheduled flight byFinnair fromTokyo,Japan, over theNorth Pole toHelsinki,Finland, on 23 December 1987. In 2014, Finnish media reported a claim by two of the flight's pilots that theSoviet Union had fired amissile at the aircraft, which exploded less than 30 seconds before impact. The allegations came out only in September 2014, whenHelsingin Sanomat, the leading Finnish daily newspaper, published an extensive article on the matter.[1] The Finnish Broadcasting CorporationYLE reported on the article on the internet the same day.[2][3]
When the matter came out, it caused outrage in Finland among those politicians and civil servants, to whom it should have been reported at the time,[2] and it was widely publicised and commented upon in the Finnish media, amidst allegations ofFinlandization.
The alleged incident has been compared to other similar incidents involving the Soviet Union, such as theAero Kaleva in 1940,Aeroflot Flight 902 in 1962,Korean Air Lines Flight 902 in 1978, andKorean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983. Co-captain Kaukiainen said that the Finnair pilots decided to speak out on the matter afterMalaysia Airlines Flight 17 had been shot down inUkraine on 17 July 2014.[4]
Finnair was the first airline in the world to fly non-stop scheduled flights between Europe and Japan starting in 1983. The aircraft they used wasMcDonnell Douglas DC-10-30ERs, which had extrafuel tanks fitted in the cargo space that enabled the plane to take on 24,000 litres (5,300 imp gal; 6,300 US gal) of additional fuel. This made it possible to cover the 5,413 nautical miles (10,025 km; 6,229 mi) from Tokyo to Helsinki on anon-stop flight that lasted 13 hours. The flight was carried out in international air space, over the North Pole, since the Soviet Union had demanded extra payments for flights over its territory inSiberia, in addition to ordinarynavigation fees. The range of the aircraft of other western airlines did not allow for such flights, and they landed inAnchorage,Alaska, for refuelling. Japanese airlines did not fly non-stop over Siberia, as they thought that the Soviet Union would have demanded bilateral flight rights in return.[1][5]
The aircraft involved was a DC-10-30/ERleased to Finnair and flying in Finnairlivery. It was originally registered inFinland with the registration OH-LHC, but it was mostly known for its re-registration in theUnited States as N345HC. It was built and delivered to Finnair in 1981. The same aircraft was later painted withMoomin characters. It was used by Finnair between 1981 and 1995, although on two occasions in the 1990s it was leased toGaruda Indonesia.[citation needed]
The Finnair aircraft had taken off from Tokyo'sNarita International Airport[6] almost onschedule, around 10 a.m. Japanese time (3 a.m. Finnish time) on 23 December 1987, and it carried 201passengers, fourpilots, and 12 Finnish and 2 Japaneseflight attendants. The cruising altitude was 10,600 m (34,800 ft).[1]
The flight proceeded north from Tokyo toBering Strait and on over the North Pole and then with the aid of aninertial navigation system south towardSvalbard and on toward Helsinki. Before the Bering Strait, the plane crossed theInternational Date Line over theAleutian Islands and thus for some time flew during the previous day, 22 December.[7]
According to the pilots' 2014 report of the incident, when the aircraft was over theEdgeøya island of Svalbard, between 1 and 2 p.m. Finnish time, the assistantpilot in command Esko Kaukiainen andassistant first officer Markku Soininen saw a rocket approaching the aircraft ahead, at 30 degrees to the left of the flight path of the plane. The pilot in command and the first officer were having a rest at the time. Visibility was good, and the pilots followed the flight of the rocket for more than half a minute. At first, they thought it was a Soviet weather rocket on its way to thetroposphere, but when it reached the cruising altitude of the aircraft, it turned and came straight at it. Then the rocket exploded. It was clear to the pilots that the rocket had been locked to its target, the Finnair aircraft.[1][8]
The inertial navigation system equipment of the aircraft allowed the crew to determine their position. After the explosion, Kaukiainen started astopwatch. 60 to 80 seconds later the aircraft came to the dust cloud left by the explosion. With thecruising speed of the aircraft being 900 km/h (560 mph) and that of the missile at least 1,800 km/h (1,100 mph), the pilots calculated that the explosion had taken place only about 20 seconds before impact. The pilots watched as the hull of the missile fell down towards the sea in a spirallike motion.
The pilot in command came to thecockpit later and took care of the landing at about 4 p.m. Finnish time. The pilots who had been in the cockpit during the events reported orally to him.[1][4]
The pilots were in no doubt as to where the missile came from: the Soviet Union. They surmised that it had been fired from theKola Peninsula or from asubmarine. When they talked toHelsingin Sanomat in 2014, they said they thought it had been some kind of exercise. They thought that either things had gone as planned in the exercise, or then they had gone wrong. In case it had gone according to plan, it meant that the Finnair aircraft had been used fortarget practice. One possibility they had considered was that it was a missile gone astray, as had been the case three years previously with the so-calledLake Inari missile incident in the north of Finland.[1]
ProfessorStefan ForssPh.D. from the Strategic and Defence Studies of theNational Defence University of Finland, a specialist in the technology of war, especially that ofnuclear weapons systems,[9][10][11] pointed out that missile could not have been aconventional ground-launchedballistic orcruise missiles with intermediaterange, which were due to be eliminated as a result ofIntermediate-Range Nuclear Forces or INF Treaty ratified between theUnited States and the Soviet Union ratified in early 1987, as the elimination of these missiles began only in late July the following year.[12]
Turun Sanomat, a daily newspaper published inTurku, Finland, interviewedColonel Ahti Lappi (retired), who worked from 1988 to 1996 as theanti-aircraft inspector of theFinnish Defence Forces, in the highest position in this branch of the defence forces. Lappi stated the following things:
According to Lappi, the explosion of the missile in mid-air is a mystery. He does not remember any missile from the 1980s that could have been detonated from the ground with remote control. Surface-to-air missiles haveself-destruction systems, which detonate the charge automatically before the end of thetrajectory of the missile (possibly meaning before they hit the ground). Lappi thought that the missile could have been aS-125 Pechora, which withinNATO is called SA-3 Goa, of which there is a version that is used on surface vessels. It was used by the Soviet Union and as of 2014 was still being used in dozens of countries. Itsceiling is 17 kilometres (11 mi; 9.2 nmi) and it has arange of 27 kilometres (17 mi; 15 nmi).[citation needed]
The huge dust cloud, however, speaks against a Pechora missile, in Lappi's opinion. The 60 kilograms (130 lb)charge of the missile does not produce an explosion that would be spectacular.[13]
The pilots had agreed that the pilot in command would file a report after the flight, as it was his duty to report on such matters. Kaukiainen reminded him of this on two occasions in the weeks following the alleged incident.[4] However, it seems the pilot in command never did do it, due in part to the fact that the celebration ofChristmas interfered with the process. Kaukiainen also speculated that perhaps he did not want to write it, as he had not witnessed the incident himself, and it would have been difficult for him to argue that it had taken place.[14]
When theHelsingin Sanomat article came out in 2014, he had already died. Lauri J. Laine, retired director of flights for Finnair at the time, confirmed that no report was ever written about the incident.[14]
However, the events had been discussed within Finnair, especially in pilot training. One Finnair official from the flights direction team, who chose to remain anonymous, toldHelsingin Sanomat that he had heard about the incident at the time: "It was talked about. Other pilots also said that they saw explosions on that particular route. Were they perhaps missile tests?" Kaukiainen also related the incident to at least one official within the Finnish Civil Aviation Administration which in 2014 is calledFinavia. But it turned out that there was little interest in the matter within the Finnish government, because "people were so damnedFinlandized back then, especially within theFinnish Government". In 2014 theFinnish Transport Safety Agency (TraFi) had no knowledge of the matter, and reports or flight log books for 1987 no longer existed.[1][14]
The co-captain of the flight said in an interview with HSTV, a video service ofHelsingin Sanomat that he thought of the incident again afterMalaysia Airlines Flight 17 had been shot down inUkraine on 17 July 2014. The surviving pilots, both of whom witnessed the missile and its explosion from the cockpit, then decided to speak about the incident in public.[4]
Pekka Henttu, director of the aviation department at TraFi, said that today such an incident would not be hushed. It is likely that the authorities and the top executives of the airline would have been informed of it even before the plane lands.[15][16]
Pekka Vennamo, who was theMinister of Transport in 1987, as well asPertti Salolainen, who was theMinister of Foreign Trade at the time, only heard about the incident when they read theHelsingin Sanomat article in September 2014. The same was the case withSeppo Tiitinen, Director of theFinnish Security Intelligence Service at the time. Tiitinen said that "the matter would absolutely been of interest within the Security Intelligence Service … Information concerning an incident like this should have been passed on automatically from civil servants in the aviation branch to the authorities — then just as now. … It would have been passed on to the top people in the government, and they would have decided whether some kind of action would have been required."
Salolainen is said to have been enraged when he read about the incident. He considers the incident to have been "outrageous", and he continued saying that "it would not have been civilized behaviour, it would have been low-life militarygangsterism, if the description of the events is accurate." Salolainen said that even in 2014 information is withheld from theParliament of Finland and theministers of the government "in a manner that is deplorable." Vennamo stated that "it is a heinous offence if the Finnair plane had indeed been used for target practice."[2][17][18]
