1972 Königs Wusterhausen air disaster
The 1972 Königs Wusterhausen air disaster occurred on 14 August when Interflug Flight 450 Ilyushin Il-62 crashed shortly after take-off from Berlin-Schönefeld Airport in Schönefeld, East Germany, on a holiday charter flight to Burgas, Bulgaria. The accident was caused by a fire in the aft cargo bay. All 156 passengers and crew died. To date, it is the deadliest aviation accident in Germany. Aircraft and crew The aircraft was a Soviet-built Ilyushin IL-62 aircraft, registered DM-SEA, powered by four Kuznetsov NK-8 engines. It first flew in April 1970, and up until the accident had acquired 3,520 flight-time hours. The aircrew consisted of 51-year-old captain Heinz Pfaff, 35-year-old first officer Lothar Walther, 32-year-old flight engineer Ingolf Stein, and 38-year-old navigator Achim Flilenius. The flight crew members had 8,100, 6,041, 2,258, and 8,570 hours of experience, respectively. Crash Interflug flight IF450 left Berlin-Schönefeld Airport at 16:30 local time. Because of the summer holiday, the number of passengers – mainly tourists bound for the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast – almost reached the full capacity of the airliner. Takeoff proceeded normally, and the aircraft then headed southeast towards Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. At 16:43, thirteen minutes into the flight and above the city