No bid to identify plane —claim

Press, 29 February 1984, Page 11

No bid to identify plane —claim

NZPA-Reuter Montreal The Soviet Union made no attempt to identify a straying South Korean airliner before shooting it down last September with the loss of 269 lives, a team of United Nations aviation experts said yesterday. Soviet fighters sent up to intercept the plane also failed to position themselves alongside so that the South Korean pilot could see them clearly, the report from the International Civil Aviation Organisation claimed. The organisation’s air navigation commission said, “There is no evidence of any attempt to identify the aircraft/

The commission, basing its conclusions on air-to-ground communication records, said these “gave no clear indication that the intercepting aircraft had taken up a position within view of the pilot of the intercepted aircraft. “It is of paramount importance for the interceptor aircraft to ensure that it attracts the attention of the pilot-in-command of the civil aircraft,” it said. Yesterday’s report was basically the commission’s comments on the findings of an 1.C.A.0. investigation team that visited the Soviet Union late last year. The commission said it was “difficult to validate and endorse” a theory of the investigative team that the plane’s crew had incorrectly programmed a navigation computer'and allowed the plane to drift from its proper course for hours through inattentiveness. The commission did recommend modifying the programming systems.