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Aeroflot Flight 244 was the scene of the first successful aircraft hijacking in the Soviet Union^[1] on 15 October 1970 when the Lithuanian national Pranas Brazinskas and his son Algirdas seized an AN-24 domestic passenger plane en route from Batumi, Adjar ASSR, Georgian SSR, to Sukhumi and Krasnodar to defect to the West. In a shootout with guards on board,^[2] 19-year-old air-hostess Nadezhda Kurchenko was killed and several members of the crew were wounded.^[1] The hijackers commandeered the plane to Trabzon, Turkey, and surrendered to the Turkish government. The Brazinskas were tried and imprisoned, but Turkey refused to cede them to the Soviet authorities.^[3] The plane with its passengers was soon returned to the USSR. After spending some time in prison, in 1974, the Brazinskas were granted amnesty and made their way to the United States where they were naturalized in 1983. The memories of the incident resurfaced again in 2002, when Algirdas Brazinskas (now known as Albert Victor White) was convicted by the court of Santa Monica of murdering his 77-year-old father Pranas Brazinskas (Frank White) during a family argument.^[2][4]

References

See also

• Aeroflot Flight 6833
• List of Eastern Bloc defectors

← 1969 Aviation accidents and incidents in 1970 1971→ Dominicana DC-9 air disaster (February 15) - Swissair Flight 330 (February 21) - Japan Airlines Flight 351 (March 31) - Philippine Airlines Flight 215 (April 21) - ALM Flight 980 (May 2) - Dymshits-Kuznetsov hijacking affair (May 15) - Air Canada Flight 621 (July 5) - LANSA Flight 502 (August 9) - China Airlines Flight 206 (August 12) - Dawson's Field hijackings (September 6) - Wichita State University football team plane crash (October 2) - Aeroflot Flight 244 (October 15) - Southern Airways Flight 932 (November 14) Bold blue indicates incidents resulting at least 50 deaths (current article is always in bold black) Red indicates the deadliest incident in 1970