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Korean Air Lines Flight 902 was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from Paris to Seoul via Anchorage. On 20 April 1978, the Soviet air defense shot down the aircraft serving the flight, a Boeing 707, near Murmansk, Soviet Union, after the aircraft violated Soviet airspace.
Flight 902 had veered off course over the Arctic Ocean and entered Soviet airspace near the Kola Peninsula, whereupon it was intercepted and fired upon by a Soviet fighter jet. The incident killed two of the 109 passengers and crew members aboard and forced the plane to make an emergency landing on the frozen Korpijärvi Lake.
Events
Flight 902 departed from Paris, France, at 13:39 local time on a course to Seoul, South Korea. It was commanded by Captain Kim Chang-kyu (46), with Co-pilot Cha Soon-do, & Flight Engineer Lee Khun-shik, making up the 3 crew on the flight deck. At 21:19 (9:19 PM), the plane entered Soviet airspace. As the plane did not respond to multiple requests from the ground, a Sukhoi Su-15 interceptor, piloted by Alexander Bosov, was dispatched to intercept the airliner. Having approached KAL902, Bosov waggled the Su-15's wings multiple times: waggling wings is the international signal for the airliner to follow the interceptor. Instead, KAL902 made a 90-degree turn towards the Soviet-Finnish border. Bosov reported the attempted escape from Soviet airspace to the Air Defence Command Officer Vladimir Tsarkov, and the latter, based on internal instructions, commanded Bosov to shoot down KAL902.
According to Kim's account of the attack, the interceptor approached his aircraft from the right side rather than the left as required by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) regulation. Flight 902's co-pilot Cha said that the crew had attempted to communicate with the interceptor via radio, but did not receive a response.
Bosov tried to convince his superiors that the plane was not a military threat, but after receiving orders to shoot it down According to the diary of a passenger on board Flight 902, an account supported by other passengers, an hour and 40 minutes elapsed before the landing.
On 29 April, the pilot and navigator of Flight 902 were released. TASS, the official news agency of the Soviet Union, said that they had confessed to violating Soviet airspace and disregarding orders from the intercepting aircraft to land.
Aftermath
The Soviet Union refused to cooperate with international experts while they investigated the incident and did not provide any data from the plane's "black box".