30 August 1978 · Aircraft and balloons
LOT Flight 165: East Germans divert a Polish airliner to Tempelhof
When a plan to leave via Poland with forged papers fell through, two East Germans hijacked the LOT airliner flying from Gdańsk to East Berlin-Schönefeld and forced it down at Tempelhof in West Berlin.
According to an rbb eyewitness interview, the plan had been to escape from Gdańsk to the West by ferry, using forged papers. When that failed, the East German woman and her accomplice Detlev Tiede decided to take over a Polish passenger plane instead.
On 30 August 1978 LOT flight 165, a scheduled service from Gdańsk to Schönefeld Airport in East Berlin, was diverted and forced to land at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin. The charge later brought against Hans Detlef Alexander Tiede said that he had used force, threats and a pistol, taken a hostage and diverted the aircraft. His co-defendant was Ingrid Ruske, whose twelve-year-old daughter was with them.
Because Tempelhof lay in the American sector, the case went before the United States Court for Berlin. In a published decision of 14 March 1979 the court ruled that the US Constitution applied to its proceedings, so the defendants were entitled to a jury trial.
Decades later the woman told the story in an interview for rbb's Berlin Wall video chronicle, where she appears under the name Ingrid Maron.
Sources
Whose account is this? Drawn from Western official records, a press report and a witness account.
Western official records
- United States v. Tiede, 86 F.R.D. 227 (U.S. Ct. Berlin 1979) – opinion of 14 March 1979United States Court for Berlin (text hosted by Brandeis University)
- Weekly Situation Report on International Terrorism, 6 September 1978: "Polish Airliner Hijacking to West Berlin" (CIA, CIA-RDP79-01209A001000050001-3)CIA CREST (Internet Archive copy of the CIA reading room)
- International Issues Review: "The LOT Airlines Hijacking: Sorting Out the Jurisdictional Issues" (CIA, CIA-RDP79T00912A002300010021-1)CIA CREST (Internet Archive copy of the CIA reading room)
Press
Witness accounts
- Flugzeugentführung (Zeitzeugin Ingrid Maron)rbb – Die Berliner Mauer: Geschichte in Bildern
Facts checked against the sources: November 2026
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Cite this page
Berlin Experiences, “LOT Flight 165: East Germans divert a Polish airliner to Tempelhof”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lot-165-hijack-tempelhof-1978/ (accessed [date]).
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