Korean Airlines Flight 007

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What is your opinion of this international incident? was it accidental or it was inentional???? Korean Air Lines Flight 007, also known as KAL 007 or KE007, was a Korean Air Lines civilian airliner shot down by Soviet jet interceptors on September 1, 1983 just west of Sakhalin island. KAL 007 carried 269 passengers and crew, including U.S. congressman Lawrence McDonald. There were no survivors. The Soviet Union stated it did not know the aircraft was civilian and suggested it had entered Soviet airspace as a deliberate provocation by the United States, amidst the Cold War, to test its military response capabilities. The incident attracted a storm of protest from across the world, particularly from the U.S. The Soviet Union stated it did not know the aircraft was civilian and suggested it had entered Soviet airspace as a deliberate provocation by the United States, amidst the Cold War, to test its military response capabilities. The incident attracted a storm of protest from across the world, particularly from the U.S. Korean Air Lines flight KAL 007 was a commercial Boeing 747-200 (registration: HL7442) flying from New York City, United States to Seoul, South Korea. It took off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on August 31 carrying 240 passengers and 29 crew. After refueling at Anchorage International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska the aircraft departed for Seoul at 13:00 GMT (3:00 am local time) on September 1. KAL 007 flew westward and then arced south on a course for Seoul-Kimpo International Airport that took the craft much farther west than usual (allegedly on a 245 degrees magnetic heading), cutting across the Soviet Kamchatka Peninsula and then over the Sea of Okhotsk towards Sakhalin, violating Soviet airspace over a significant distance. A KAL flight had violated Soviet airspace before. In April 1978, a Soviet fighter fired on Korean Air Lines Flight 902 after it had flown over the Kola Peninsula, killing two passengers and forcing the aircraft to crash-land on a frozen lake. An investigation into the cause of that incident was complicated by Soviet refusal to release the aircraft's flight data recorders. Other commercial airliners had made course errors of comparable magnitude from time to time, but not over Soviet airspace.