LOT Flight 7 - Aftermath

Aftermath

The Polish government's Special Disaster Commission sent its findings on the cause of the accident to Moscow. In response, Russian engineers and scientists stated that the reasons given were implausible and that the turbine disintegrated because of engine failure, contrary to what was stated in the Polish report. (This could partially be attributed to a grudge Russian engineers held against Poles, who purchased their Ilyushins but replaced their radionavigational systems with separately purchased, more modern American ones.) Many years later it was revealed that after Flight 007's crash, all Il-62s used by Russian officials and VIPs had their engines discreetly replaced with newer ones. At one occasion, Polish governmental Il-62M had had specially installed newer engines for a joint Polish-Russian governmental trip to Beijing; after that, the engines were taken back to the USSR.

The Polish commission report also called for some modernizations in the Il-62 design, most notably doubling the flight controls, so that if one system failed the plane would still be controllable. At the time, redundant controls of this kind were in general use in American and European-made airliners. This issue was never addressed by the Russians; none of their Ilyushins of all types had installed alternate controls.

A small statue dedicated to the boxers who perished in the accident - a trigonal prism made of bronze, with a knocked-out boxer statue at the top, is located at the grounds of Warsaw sport club Skra Warszawa. An identical statue is located at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. The statues were funded by Thomas Kane of Printon Kane and Company and AIBA and designed by American sculptor Auldwin Thomas Schonberg.

The graves of the "Kopernik" crew are located at the Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw. One of the streets adjacent to the crash site bears the name of Captain Paweł Lipowczan.