NEW PACIFIC AIR PACT LETS PLANES IN TROUBLE LAND IN SOVIET

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807510001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 22, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807510001-3 STAT
ARTICLE APP)w
ON PAGE
NEW YORK TIMES
22 November 1985
New Pacific Air Pact Lets Planes in
Trouble Land in Soviet
an as found no
evidence that the RAW Md bM ?Md=.
Up to 8 Months Needed
Mr. Signer, a farmer test pilot, said that all
the technical details of new direct phone links
By RICHARD WIT@l
The Soviet-American-Japanese civil avia-
tion pact announced in Geneva sets up the
first procedures for foreign airliners or other
civil planes to make emergency landing in
the Soviet Union, the chief American negotia-
tor said yesterday.
Until now, planes. in trouble over the North
Pacific in areas closer tp Russian territory
than to American or Japanese airfields have
had no ready means for contacting Soviet au.
thorities to authorise them to set down. "We
have broken through a looptatdfn` aviation
barrier there," said the American official,
Donald R. Sagner, an associate administra-
tor of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Dlsdssnre in Cimmookpi
Equally important, he said, was the crea-
tion of procedures to help civil aircraft get
back on course - or be notified they wen off
course - after having gotten lost or having
strayed into another nation's airspace.
The pact was signed in Washington on
Tuesday and was disclosed in the communi-
que from the Geneva summit meeting. The
document said President Reagan and Mi-
khail S. Gorbachev viewed the development
"with thr on negotiation were under-
taken after a Soviet jet fighter shot down a
South Korean Boeing 747 airliner that had
flown over the Soviet island of Sakhalin on
Sept. 1, 183. All 20 people on the jumbo jet
wen killed. The Soviet Government
between Soviet and Japanese air traffic c en-
tore and other improvements in communica-
tions had been worked out. He said the im-
proved network was expected to go into
Administration gadal months. formal approv~to
the pact before it was signed Tuesday, Mr.
Signer said, and the formal approval of the
Soviet and Japanese Governments was con-
sidered a formality.
Mr. Signer said six to eight months would
be required before implementation because
time was needed for the installation of com-
munications equipment and for the training
of some Soviet technicians.' In accordance
with worldwide practice, English will be the
language for handling air-traffic problems
under the pact.
A crucial element of the system will be a di-
rect phone link between the air traffic control
stations at Khabarovsk in the Soviet Union
and in Tokyo. This will be backed up, Mr.
Segner said, by telegraphic and radio links.
Rapid Notification
There have long been direct telephone links
between the Japanese center and the Amer-
ican traffic control center in Anchorage,
Alaska. It was from Anchorage that the Ko-
rean plane, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, took
off on a trip to Seoul along a standard flight
path that passes near the Kamchatka Penin-
sula in the Soviet Union. Instead of following
the flight path, the plane began easing too far
west soon after its takeoff, and it was hun-
dreds of miles off course in Soviet airspace
when it was destroyed by a Soviet jet.
Under the system in effect at the time,
there was no procedure for contacting Soviet
civil air authorities to try to rectify the situa-
tion even if the crew, or American or Japa-
nese authorities, had known what was hap-
Soviet air traffic stations were not involved
because the.flight's intended course lay out"
side the airspace they were responsible for.
With the new system, Mr. Segner ex-
plained, the Russians can be rapidly notified
of a navigation problem and a stray plane
can be directed back to its proper route.
Similar assistance will be available for
planes threatened by a breakdown or fire fire
in flight.
"If such a plane was over the Pacific," Mr.
Segner said, "and it was too far from an
American or Japanese airfield, we will be
able to contact Khabarovsk. We could de-
scribe the emergency and relay instructions
back to the plane so that the plane could at-
tempt an emergency landing in Russia if it
was close enough."
Other provisions of the new pact establish
procedures for dealing with hijackings along
the route. The communications links, Mr.
Segner said, will be in operation 24 hours a
day, seven days a week, and they will be
checked every day to make sure they are
working properly.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807510001-3