Ka 007

[Captain Greaser]

Watched a program last night on Discovery wings about ka007 shoot down.
Haveing operated the type myself I find it inconcievable that somebody would leave navigational mode switch in heading and not realise it for hours.
However I'm not familiar with the old ins they were using. They were giveing position reports for positions they were not actually at.
My question is the alert light on the ins illuminates when approaching a way point. Is that a function of distance travelled and the crew were simply calling position reports in response to this????
Or does the alert light go off when actually approaching a waypoint.
Of course there is the posibillity the ins was miss aligned to begin with??????

[Graybeard]

Part of the answer can be found in the thread on current KAL pilot culture. It was certainly no better in 1983, meaning if the Capt. left a switch in wrong position, nobody would dare question it. That said, what are you chances of coming even close to Sakhalin if you had remained on a vectored heading out of ANC?

The LTN-72 aboard that 747 required keying in the departure lat/long and 9 more waypoints. You weren't supposed to do it, but crossloading departure waypoint data from the first to the other two INS was possible.

The easiest mistake would be to accidentally key in 139 or 140 W. Long. instead of 149W for ANC alignment. INS will detect erroneous latitude, due to earth rate, but not erroneous longitude. A second pilot was supposed to verify the data entered, but.. Once the erroneous departure point was inserted, all the following navigation would appear normal; you would just be west of your intended track.

INS based position reporting would have been late, especially while still over Alaska, and their reports were about a half hour late, from what I heard at the time.

Just a month before KAL 007, a DC-10 departed LAX, headed for HNL. They were north of course upon leaving the coastline, and were alerted by ATC. They returned to LAX and wrote up both INS. That vintage INS had non-volatile memory only for the last position when shut down, which was also departing point in this case. In other words, with operable INS, the last position displayed was what had ben entered before departure.

The memory in both units showed Lat of 33-56N, which was correct, but Long of 104-53W, instead of the correct 123-3W. Where did they get 104-53? Looking on a map, that position was in Oklahoma! It took only a moment to look straight north and see Denver. DEN was one of their hubs. A pilot had entered the wrong Long from his faulty memory, and the other crew didn't catch it.

Had they continued on, great circle nav would have taken them well north of Hawaii, with a destination 800 miles to the west.

GB

[Rainboe]

My understanding at the time was they were on heading mode out to the coast of Alaska. They apparently neglected to select Nav and couple heading control to the INS. From Nome on the coast, instead of being in Nav, they retained the last selected heading which fitted with the approach to the Alaskan coast. It was calculated with the winds at the time, this would have fitted their ultimate position at shoot down off Sakhalin. No great mystery, and dare one say, there can hardly be a pilot flying who has not made a similar mistake, if only for a few moments. I recall the 2 minute alert light would still illuminate even though you could be way off track, it would still indicate 2 minutes to passing the abeam and switchover of INS legs.

[Semaphore Sam]

I stopped flying the classic in '98, but I DO remember thinking there was a weakness in the instrumentation. When engaged in a navigation mode (vor, ins, etc) a white flag showed 'nav'. However, when in heading mode, there was NO flag showing...now, on a crosscheck, human nature looks for discrepencies. A white 'nav' flag when wanting 'heading' mode, and vice versa, is quite easy to spot. However, the LACK of a flag is like a passive warning...I caught myself, and first officers, more than once because of this (albeit never more than a few min). Why didn't Boeing put a white 'Heading' mode flag showing positive engagement of heading? A little trap, and may have cost many lives.

[squak7700]

This is what happened:

They pushed back with IRS in allign,so there goes the NAV.Fearing a delay and management backlash they decided to go ATT and fly DEAD reckoning and HDG.

Possible?

[Rainboe]

So incredibly unlikely it's out of the question IMO. Only a fool would do such a thing at these latitudes and this routing. Just not on. The Heading scenario instead of Nav is overwhelmingly the most likely cause. It all fits exactly with where they ended up.

[Dream Land]

Would also mean a takeoff on the standby instruments, doubtful. :uhoh:

[squak7700]

This is korean Air you are talking about.Anything is possible. Loss of face.

Pushback in ALLIGN,you gonna lose all your NAV data.To regain it you need a full reallignment.Takes 10 minutes to do it.But if you sw it to ATT,you can still use the HDG and ATT mode(Basic flying modes).And this mode you dont need allignment time.How are they going to answer to their management about the delay and lose face over such failure.

So think about it?possible?

[hetfield]

@auak7700

Yes, possible. But as far as I remember they aligned the IRS with wrong ccordinates.

[squak7700]

Inputting a wrong coordinate(if error greater than a preset nm from the previous coordinate) will trigger a warning lite.So an input of a EAST long instead of a WEST long will surely trigger the warning.One way is to force the IRS to accept the coordinate,another is to bypass NAV and go to ATT mode.Again all this got to do with ALLIGNEMENT time they have.


Just curious

[Rainboe]

Why are these other scenarios regarded as 'possible'....yes, 'likely'.....very much no. So we now have:
Aligned using the wrong co-ordinates (what about the warnings that would ensue?)
Moved before switching to align, then did not align properly (OK....why?)

Why do you hang on to these theories when the overwhelming wealth of evidence, and it fits in with subsequent tracking, is that they simply neglected to switch to Nav mode and remained in the heading mode they used to get to Nome? Very likely, very plausible, and I have to admit I have done it myself, several times, it is easy to do, and I have many times picked up other people for it. So why go for unlikely theories when this one was regarded as the most likely and most easy to do, and it fits perfectly with the tracking on the day?

[Graybeard]

"Inputting a wrong coordinate(if error greater than a preset nm from the previous coordinate) will trigger a warning lite."

What warning lite?

That's not true on the INS I know. Entering a wrong longitude will trigger a flashing of the coordinates, but that is cleared by merely hitting the Enter button again, so easily bypassed.

Why don't you guys accept the truth of these old systems, the LTN-72, the Delco Carousel IV, and the Collins INS-61B? I gave a real life example of wrong longitude being inputted and accepted, i.e., LAX Lat and DEN Long, yet you chant it can't be done.

Nome is about 300 degrees from ANC. Sakhalin is about 240 degrees. Please explain.

[Hold West]

I know of three separate occasions where aircraft departing HNL keyed in the coords for DUFFE rather than CLURE outbound on R465 because of the confusing way they were printed on the enroute chart. All happened while I was working, so I'm sure it happened more than that. It can happen!

[Rainboe]

Greybeard- my apologies- it's about 18 years since I operated through Anchorage to Japan. It wasn't Nome, I think it was Bethel where you usually coasted out. Turning onto a direct track from near ANC for the coast out position, then inadvertently maintaining this heading instead of Nav would result in the final position. Easy to do, and it fitted, and in my mind a far more likely event than any other possibility, as indeed was generally recognised at the time. We had a plane that had some sort of mess up on its alignment and tried to continue out of ANC. They gave up and dumped fuel and returned.

[Graybeard]

Gee, Rainboe, you were so sure of yourself in dismissing the other explanations.

I don't remember the 747 glareshield that well, and the pix I have aren't clear enough; isn't there a Radio/Nav mode selector? Which do you assume they were in?

GB

[Rainboe]

Not me dismissing the other explanations, it was generally perceived as the most likely eventuality at the time- I was flying the Classic on the same route at this time. There was a nav button on the Glareshield Mode panel, which was the only selector to go from Heading Mode to Nav, and couple the autopilot to the INS Navigation system. Very, very simple mistake to make, and not be picked up if operating procedures were sloppy. Any other surmising is just that- surmising, with far less basis of likelihood than this explanation, though with so little wreckage and data recovered, no explanation can be positively ruled out. Just some are far more likely than others- in that case, I see no reason to start believing the least likely explanation.

[Graybeard]

While flying coupled in SEL HDG, the HSI still displays left-right deviation and distance, either from the VOR-DME in Radio mode, or from the INS in NAV mode.

How can a pilot be so numb as to ignore the HSI deviation needles, while unintentionally flying in SEL HDG mode?

OTOH, being coupled to the INS with wrong initial longitude makes everything look absolutely normal once past the first waypoint, which may have occurred even before they were turned loose to own navigation by ATC. This also explains how they were late on their position reports over SW Alaska.

GB