VIENNA, Austria -- Two Polish army pilots hijacked their military biplane Thursday at gunpoint during a training flight and forced a resisting crewman to fly with their wives and children to Austria.
It was the second hijacking by Polish citizens escaping to the West since theDec. 13 declaration of martial law.
The two hijackers, identified as Andrzej Malec, 31, and Jerzy-Jan Czerwinsky, 29, landed at Schwechat airport in a Soviet-made Antonov-2 biplane with 10 people aboard, including their wives and four children.
The plane took off from Krakow military airport for a routine training flight but made an unscheduled landing in an open field to pick up the pilots' families, police said.
The plane mechanic, identified as Boleslav Wrona, 35, resisted the hijacking but was forced at gunpoint to keep silent. Wrona told police he had nothing to do with the hijacking and wanted to return to Poland 'as soon as possible.'
Also aboard was Michar Vasielevsky, 29, a civilian. He participated in the daring escape to join his wife, who had left earlier for the West.
All escapees, except Wrona, requested political asylum and were placed in a camp at Traiskirchen near Vienna, where thousands of other Polish refugees have been housed.
The pilots flew across Czechoslovakia at a very low altitude to avoid radar detection and the wings of the one-engine biplane were slightly damaged after hitting the tops of several trees.
Police said they notified officials at the Polish Embassy in Vienna about the incident and told them the aircraft could return to Poland any time.
Wrona was expected to depart with the plane as soon as another Polish crew arrived.
Police said the hijackers will have to stand trial in Austria for forcing the mechanic to take part in the escape.
On Feb. 12, a Polish pilot hijacked the airliner he was flying on a domestic flight from Warsaw to Wroclow with six members of his family on board to West Berlin's Tempelhof Airport.
The pilot asked for political asylum for himself, his wife and two children, his cousin, his cousin's wife and their 14-month-old baby.
The Antonov-2 plane is the same type used by 21 Romanians, mostly children, on July 3, 1980, to escape to Austria where they also asked for political aslyum.
