JAT Flight 367 - Challenges To The Official Cause

Challenges To The Official Cause

The officially stated cause of the crash was challenged on numerous occasions over the years.

Most recently, the discussion about different aspects of the crash was reopened on 8 January 2009, when German news magazine Tagesschau featured a report by investigative journalists Peter Hornung and Pavel Theiner. Based on newly obtained documents mainly from the Czech Civil Aviation Authority, they concluded that it was extremely likely that the plane had been mistakenly shot down only a few hundred meters above the ground by a MiG fighter of the Czechoslovak Air Force, having been mistaken for an enemy aircraft while attempting a forced landing. As evidence that the DC-9 had broken up at a lower altitude, the report cited eyewitnesses from Srbská Kamenice, who had seen the plane burning but still intact below the low-hanging clouds, and confirmation of a Serbian aviation expert (who had been present at the crash site) that the debris area had been much too small for a crash from high altitude; it also referred to sightings of a second plane. According to Hornung, flight 367 got into difficulties, "went into a steep descent and found itself over a sensitive military area", close to a nuclear weapons facility. The Czech Civilian Aviation Authority dismissed the claims as media sensationalism, that occurs from time to time, while Vesna Vulović (who has no memory of the crash or the flight after boarding) referred to the claims that the plane attempted a forced landing or descended to such low altitude as a "nebulous nonsense". A representative of Guinness World Records stated that "it seems that at the time Guinness was duped by this swindle just like the rest of the media."