Ostatni Lot i Katastrofa „Mikołaja Kopernika” na Okęciu

On March 14, 1980, 950 meters short of the runway at Okęcie Airport, the LOT Polish Airlines plane "Mikołaj Kopernik" crashed. Eighty-seven people died—among them Anna Jantar and almost the entire U.S. amateur boxing team. For 30 years, Poles believed that a faulty Soviet plane was solely to blame. The truth, which only came to light in 2010, was much more inconvenient. In this episode, you'll hear the whole story: from the birth of the Il-62 and LOT's first transatlantic flights, through the last 26 seconds of the "Kopernik" flight, to the investigation covered up by the Security Service (SB) and the discoveries of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which rewrote history. 🎧 If true crime podcasts and historical reportage are your thing, stay tuned. Like the episode and leave a comment if you'd like more stories like this from Poland. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 02:01 The Birth of Copernicus 05:38 Crew and Passengers 10:55 The Course of the Disaster 20:26 Witnesses and the First Hours 23:32 The Daughter Who Waited at the Airport 25:44 Silence, Information About the Disaster 27:26 The Commission, Initial Findings 31:52 The Commission Report and Its Rejection by Moscow 35:58 What the IL-62 Didn't Have 38:17 The Pilots' Mutiny and the Second Hidden Cause 44:32 The Investigation That Fell Apart 47:25 The Truth Comes to Light 50:54 Memory 52:40 Conclusion / What Remains of the "Copernicus" ABOUT THIS EPISODE The plane crash at Okęcie Airport on March 14, 1980, was, at the time it occurred, The worst aviation disaster in Polish history. The Il-62 "Mikołaj Kopernik" (Nicolaus Copernicus) aircraft, flying from New York, crashed during approach after a turbine shaft in one of the engines broke. All 87 people on board died. For three decades, the official story was that faulty Soviet design was to blame. This was true—but not the whole story. In 2010, documents from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) revealed by "Newsweek Polska" showed that LOT Polish Airlines' cost-cutting policies also contributed to the disaster: operating engines beyond their service life and sending aircraft with known defects. This is a story about technology, but above all, about people: about Captain Paweł Lipowczan, who managed to avoid a building full of children in the final, uncontrollable seconds of the flight; about Anna Jantar, who didn't arrive in time to greet her daughter waiting at the airport; and about a system that for decades concealed an uncomfortable truth. SOURCES This material is based on publicly available historical sources, witness accounts, reports from a 1980 government commission, and archival documents from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) released by the media in 2010. KEYWORDS Okęcie air disaster, Mikołaj Kopernik plane, Il-62 crash, Anna Jantar death, LOT 1980 crash, Paweł Lipowczan, Polish air disasters, true crime PRL, Polish history podcast, Warsaw air disaster, US national boxing team crash, IPN Newsweek Kopernik, Kabacki Forest disaster, Polish aviation history #AirCrash #MikołajKopernik #Okęcie1980 #AnnaJantar #HistoryPolish #TrueCrime #PRL #Aviation #Podcast #LOT #KopernikCatastrophe #listen #truehistory #podcasthistorical