Flight 007 was scheduled to depart from Kennedy International Airport at about 19:00 local time on 13 March 1980, but it was delayed because of a heavy snowstorm.

During their final approach, about one minute before the landing, the crew reported to Okęcie Air Traffic Control that the landing gear indicator light was not operating, and that they would go around and allow the flight engineer to check if it was caused by a burnt-out fuse or light bulb, or if there was actually some problem with the gears deploying.

At the last moment Captain Lipowczan, using nothing but the plane's ailerons, managed to avoid hitting a correctional facility for teenagers located at Rozwojowa Street.

[4] Among the 87 fatalities were Polish singer Anna Jantar, American ethnomusicologist Alan P. Merriam, six Polish students returning home from an AIESEC conference in New York, and a contingent of the U.S. amateur boxing team (who were scheduled for a series of exhibition fights in Europe instead of the boycotted Summer Olympics.)

According to the doctors who arrived at the scene, many of the passengers were apparently asleep when the plane hit the ground, but some of them – including many of the boxers – were supposedly aware that they were about to crash, as they held to their seats so strongly that on impact, the muscles and tendons in their arms became severed.

A total of 22 U.S. boxers, trainers, and doctors died in the accident (including the 1979 Pan American Games winner light welterweight Lemuel Steeples).

A number of Olympic team members were not present due to various pugilistic injuries sustained before the flight or for other reasons, which prevented their participation in the scheduled event, so they stayed in the United States.

Finally, the turbine disc was found about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi; 2.2 nmi) from the site; it was broken into three similar-sized pieces.

The investigating commission asked the Soviets if an Il-62 was able to reach the runway with one engine operating; no conclusive answer was received, but calculations based on the official technical data suggested that, while one engine thrust was insufficient for the aircraft to maintain altitude, it was enough to reach the runway and try to land.

No explanation was found why the aircraft with one engine operating at maximum power suddenly entered a steep dive.

In an interview for Polish TV series The Black Series, Captain Tomasz Smolicz, an experienced airline pilot who flew thousands of hours on transatlantic routes on Ilyushins Il-62 and Il-62M in the 1970s and 1980s (he flew Mikołaj Kopernik from Warsaw to New York on 13 March 1980), stated that the planes returning to Warsaw from the United States usually landed on runway course 150 (150 degrees, south-south-east), and if they landed at or before noon on a sunny day (such as on 14 March 1980), the sun was shining almost directly in their eyes, which were weary after several hours of night flight and constant monitoring of cockpit instruments; this sometimes caused disorientation and confusion if an indicator light actually was lit or not; so, on that day, the landing gear indicator could have actually been lit, but the crew members might have managed to see it incorrectly.

According to the Polish government's Special Disaster Commission, the crash was caused by defects in materials, faults in the manufacturing process of the Kuznetsov NK-8 jet engine's shaft, and weaknesses in the design of its turbine.

The improper machining and impurities facilitated an accelerated fatigue fracture of this key engine component via unmitigated formation of micro-cracks through the shaft's core, ultimately leading to its failure.

One of the first measures to reduce costs was to minimize refueling planes in foreign airports due to higher jet fuel prices.

Conversely, they had a relatively small amount of fuel in reserve on the return flight, which sometimes forced them to land in bad weather.

In spite of the low reliability, the airline decided to increase overhaul life intervals to reduce the frequency of repairs, which were carried out in Soviet factories and quite expensive.

LOT sent a letter to the Ilyushin Design Bureau containing the results of a test in which it was found that the engines could operate normally 8600 hours without maintenance.

From the design bureau office came the answer that the Poles could fly as much as they want, but the manufacturer was responsible only for 5000 flight hours.

Representatives of the technical staff at the John F. Kennedy Airport reported two similar flights in the past two years.

Before the flight to New York the aircraft was checked by mechanic Zdzisław Jarmoniak, who found that the No.1 engine had a defect in one of the turbine blades.

The mechanic wanted to report it, but found that the defect was already marked there (noted), and the plane was subsequently allowed to fly.

Many years later it was revealed that after Flight 7's crash, all Il-62s used by Soviet officials and VIPs had their engines discreetly replaced with newer ones.