Four alarms. Four chances to climb. Four times the crew did not. One mountain waiting

Aviation Survival Stories · Aug 15, 2026 · 16m

Four alarms. Four chances to climb. Four times the crew did not. One mountain waiting

A flight left with two known, uncorrected defects - an inoperative VOR receiver and a missing flight director modification - and crashed into Mount Kaimaktsalan less than four minutes after takeoff. How did a crew with nearly 26,000 combined hours and no prior experience into Thessaloniki follow a departure that ended in controlled flight into terrain?

In this episode, we tell the sequence of decisions and documented failures that preceded the December 21, 1997 crash of a Lviv Airlines Yak-42, from the…