5 ms·

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

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.

VBprogrammer 7y ago
If the copilot had gone directly to the media this would have been all over the news. At least, I hope it would given the recent spate of outrage driven pieces I've seen about women wearing risque clothing (before anyone objects, they are completely within their rights to do so) being asked to cover up or being removed from a flight.
zerr 7y ago
On a similar note, Soviet government denied the existence of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact until 1989: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... Another interesting fact - while on the German side, Ribbentrop was executed in 1946, Molotov enjoyed a happy life, although, similarly to Ribbentrop, he was also involved in massacres and crimes against humanity.
keketi 7y ago
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-kalevan-tuhosta-1940-vaiettiin-vuosikymmeniksi https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2018/04/24/matkustajakone-kale... (in Finnish)
- steve19 7y ago
  So that begets the question, why do the Fins allow the Russian to use their planes as target practice by keeping silent?
  - Svip 7y ago
    Maybe there is some truth to the West German term 'Finlandisation'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization
    - apecat 7y ago
      Finn here. Finlandization is absolutely a thing, it's even mentioned OP's Fine Article on Finnair Flight 915 ;) National-level Finnish politicians still weigh their statements on matters such as the imperialist endeavors of our beloved eastern neighbor. Other institutions are gradually becoming less self-censored. Someone better informed, or just older than my 30-or-so years can probably be more precise and offer more and better examples. But I have the sense that internationally renowned journalist Jessikka Aro's reporting on Russian disinfo ops wouldn't have been encouraged, yet translated to English and Russian by Finnish state-owned broadcaster Yle before, say, 2005 https://kioski.yle.fi/omat/jessikka-aros-prize-winning-stories-on-russian-propaganda https://kioski.yle.fi/omat/jessikka-aros-prize-winning-stori...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - greedo 7y ago
    When you're a small country living next to a very powerful one, you learn to mind your manners.
    - goatinaboat 7y ago
      Or join NATO, which the Baltic states did at the first opportunity. Finland has always refused, although apparently they did think about it in 2007. Ukraine also had the opportunity, didn’t take it, and it didn’t work out so well for them.
wazoox 7y ago
Yes and no. Your explanation looks like an excuse for conspiracy theorists. It was kept secret because it looks like nothing much happened, nobody nor the plane was harmed. I've seen weird things I can't explain, and I "kept them secret" because most probably, nothing very interesting (like E.T. landing) or serious (like people getting killed) happened. Regarding the news, as complete information is impossible, the system is some sort of Chinese whispers game with multiple levels of filtering through multiple conflicting choices providing only a very remote glimpse of the real thing. There's nothing much we can do about it (except getting to the source and being very thorough on matters that you really care about, and live with the fact that you mostly know nothing). Consider climate change: Comes a new IPCC report. It's a digest of millions of papers from various sources and sciences (no one is really called a "climatologist": climate science is made by oceanologists, glaciologists, wheather specialists, etc). IPCC writes a 4000 pages report (100x or 1000x reduction from the source material). From this report, a 40 pages digest is made. Newspapers write (and people read) half-page articles about the new IPCC report, by reading this 40 pages digest and little else. As almost nobody reads more than partial reports of this 40-pages digest, unsurprisingly misunderstanding and ignorance prevail.

VBprogrammer 7y ago

If the copilot had gone directly to the media this would have been all over the news. At least, I hope it would given the recent spate of outrage driven pieces I've seen about women wearing risque clothing (before anyone objects, they are completely within their rights to do so) being asked to cover up or being removed from a flight.

zerr 7y ago

On a similar note, Soviet government denied the existence of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact until 1989: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... Another interesting fact - while on the German side, Ribbentrop was executed in 1946, Molotov enjoyed a happy life, although, similarly to Ribbentrop, he was also involved in massacres and crimes against humanity.

keketi 7y ago

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

steve19 7y ago
So that begets the question, why do the Fins allow the Russian to use their planes as target practice by keeping silent?
- Svip 7y ago
  Maybe there is some truth to the West German term 'Finlandisation'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization
  - apecat 7y ago
    Finn here. Finlandization is absolutely a thing, it's even mentioned OP's Fine Article on Finnair Flight 915 ;) National-level Finnish politicians still weigh their statements on matters such as the imperialist endeavors of our beloved eastern neighbor. Other institutions are gradually becoming less self-censored. Someone better informed, or just older than my 30-or-so years can probably be more precise and offer more and better examples. But I have the sense that internationally renowned journalist Jessikka Aro's reporting on Russian disinfo ops wouldn't have been encouraged, yet translated to English and Russian by Finnish state-owned broadcaster Yle before, say, 2005 https://kioski.yle.fi/omat/jessikka-aros-prize-winning-stories-on-russian-propaganda https://kioski.yle.fi/omat/jessikka-aros-prize-winning-stori...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- greedo 7y ago
  When you're a small country living next to a very powerful one, you learn to mind your manners.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    Or join NATO, which the Baltic states did at the first opportunity. Finland has always refused, although apparently they did think about it in 2007. Ukraine also had the opportunity, didn’t take it, and it didn’t work out so well for them.

wazoox 7y ago

Yes and no. Your explanation looks like an excuse for conspiracy theorists. It was kept secret because it looks like nothing much happened, nobody nor the plane was harmed. I've seen weird things I can't explain, and I "kept them secret" because most probably, nothing very interesting (like E.T. landing) or serious (like people getting killed) happened. Regarding the news, as complete information is impossible, the system is some sort of Chinese whispers game with multiple levels of filtering through multiple conflicting choices providing only a very remote glimpse of the real thing. There's nothing much we can do about it (except getting to the source and being very thorough on matters that you really care about, and live with the fact that you mostly know nothing). Consider climate change: Comes a new IPCC report. It's a digest of millions of papers from various sources and sciences (no one is really called a "climatologist": climate science is made by oceanologists, glaciologists, wheather specialists, etc). IPCC writes a 4000 pages report (100x or 1000x reduction from the source material). From this report, a 40 pages digest is made. Newspapers write (and people read) half-page articles about the new IPCC report, by reading this 40 pages digest and little else. As almost nobody reads more than partial reports of this 40-pages digest, unsurprisingly misunderstanding and ignorance prevail.