
Finnair Flight 915 - curtis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnair_Flight_915
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cantrevealname
This is good story to recall whenever someone says that governments,
organizations, and other big groups of people can't keep secrets. This was
kept secret for 27 years (1987 to 2014)! I imagine that the pilots told their
wives, friends, and other pilots all about it. _Nobody was even asking them to
keep it secret._ Probably hundreds of people knew what happened, but the
public and the Finnish Transport Safety Agency didn't find out for decades.
Whenever I hear some incident that's made the news, I wonder about hundreds or
thousands of worse incidents that same day that didn't make the news for
whatever reason.

~~~
keketi
Very true. A similar incident, also from Finland, was the downing of the
passenger plane Kaleva. It was shot down by Soviet warplanes during peacetime.

The vague publicly stated reason for the crash was that there was an explosion
of foreign origin. The Finnish government knew that the plane was shot down by
the Soviets, but chose to withhold this information for foreign policy
reasons.

The airline's CEO confided the truth to the pilots' widows, who were sworn to
secrecy. The true story was kept secret for almost 50 years until a Finnish
aviation historian happened to find a copy of a Soviet air force officer's
memoirs which describe the incident.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleva_(airplane)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleva_\(airplane\))

[https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2018/04/24/matkustajakone-
kale...](https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2018/04/24/matkustajakone-kalevan-
tuhosta-1940-vaiettiin-vuosikymmeniksi) (in Finnish)

~~~
steve19
So that begets the question, why do the Fins allow the Russian to use their
planes as target practice by keeping silent?

~~~
greedo
When you're a small country living next to a very powerful one, you learn to
mind your manners.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Are you Finnish? I'm not convinced many Fins would love that characterisation.

~~~
na85
I'm Canadian and agree that having a Great Power for a neighbor has a profound
impact on federal policy, both foreign and domestic.

~~~
refurb
Meh... Canadians love to define themselves as "not Americans".

~~~
na85
That's a distinct but related _social_ artifact of living next to a cultural
hegemon. What I'm talking about is domestic and foreign government policy.

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9nGQluzmnq3M
It's worth noting that Finnair hasn't lost an aircraft since 1963, and are by
some measures thus _the_ safest airline out there.

They're no minnow either: while not huge in the US, they've made a killing by
exploiting their geographical location as the fastest transfer hub between
northern Asia and Europe.

[https://www.finnair.com/hu/gb/home/rakastevagen](https://www.finnair.com/hu/gb/home/rakastevagen)

~~~
estomagordo
I love how "rakastevagen" => "rakaste vägen" is Swedish for "the shortest
path", but also sounds a bit Finnish to me, a non-Finnish speaker. Reminiscent
of "rakastan", which a Swede would know from "minä rakastan sinua", or "I love
you".

~~~
misja
Rakaste vägen is the aggregation of the Finnish word Rakaste and the Swedish
word vägen. There are quite a few words in Finnish that are borrowed from
Swedish.

~~~
rsaarelm
“Rakaste" is the superlative of the Swedish _rak_ , meaning straight. It is
not a Finnish word.

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pastrami_panda
Reminds me of the brutal sinking of the swedish passenger ship Hansa by
soviet, 84 people died with only 2 surviving.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Hansa_(1899)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Hansa_\(1899\))

~~~
pintxo
Hansa was sunk during WW2, I would not compare this to anything happening
1987.

~~~
officemonkey
The North remembers.

