Originally Posted by
MegatopLover
KAL 007, downed by the Soviets in 1983, indeed had tech-stopped in Anchorage. I think the flight originated in New York. IIRC, a computer glitch caused the on-board navigation computers to allow the aircraft to stray too close to the Kamchatka Peninsula, restricted airspace in those days, without the pilots' knowledge (the computer was telling them they were fine, off the coast in permitted airspace). The Soviets mistook the KAL aircraft for an American spy plane that had been operating in the area ...
there were/are a number of conspiracy theories about this incident, iirc mainly related to the Air Force EC-135 (“spy plane”) gathering signals intelligence (target acquisition and tracking data) on the Russian air defense system radars
Originally Posted by
MegatopLover
A number of cargo flights stop at Anchorage because they are flying routes that still cannot go nonstop. For example, I tracked a package on FedEx that routed from Clark Freeport in the Philippines to Anchorage to Memphis. For them, I guess it's still convenient to tech-stop at ANC.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that FedEx and UPS and Kalitta (and likely others) also do crew changes at ANC