Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk airp't

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Re: Plane carryin Polish president crashed near Smolensk air

Post by regi »

sn26567 wrote:RUSSIAN INVESTIGATORS have confirmed that others in addition to the operating crew were in cockpit of the TU 154 which crashed at Smolensk on 10 April killing all on board including Poland's President Lech Kaczynski.

Russian officials said they had identified at least one person who was not a crew member as the plane descended in thick fog towards the airport and added that there was evidence that another passenger – or possibly passengers – was also present.

Indications are that Kaczynski may have personally contributed to the accident by insisting the pilots land, determined as he was to reach Smolensk to attend a memorial service on the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre.

Source: AERBT
seems to be that my message from before becomes true.
Not that I am happy about it. If it is true that the pilot was forced by the president to go on with this landing despite several indications were negative, it sheds a very negative light on aviation.
The pilot is the boss, not even the president or God himself.
In fact , this is very worrying.

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Re: Plane carryin Polish president crashed near Smolensk air

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Smolensk crash transcripts released

Transcripts of black box recordings of the last minutes of the TU 154 which crashed in Smolensk on April 10 have been released by Poland’s government.

The 40-page document contains conversations between pilots and air traffic control and the times when they occurred, given in both Russian and Polish.

Some of the conversations were in Polish, some in English - air traffic control can be heard saying “pull up, pull up,” seconds before the plane hit the top of trees and crashed into forest near the Smolensk air strip at precisely 10.41, Russian time, on Saturday, April 10.

Pilots are then heard swearing and cursing in Polish as their fate becomes clear.

Visibility poor

The swearing occurred in the six seconds between the plane hitting the tree and it crashing.

It is obvious from the transcripts that the pilots were very concerned about poor visibility, caused by heavy fog. Fifteen minutes before the crash, a voice, identified as Mariusz Kazana, Poland’s Director of Diplomatic Protocol who was in the cabin at the time, asks about possibilities to land. The pilot answers that "at this moment, in such conditions, we won’t be ready to land.”

After a while the pilot says that they would make one landing attempt, but that they “probably won’t make it”.

In the cabin, during the last 30 minutes of the flight, there were, apart from the pilots, head stewardess Barbara Maciejczyk, Director of the Diplomatic Protocol Kazana and commander of the Polish Air Force General Andrzej Blasik.

After the pilots started the landing manoeuvre they, calmly, exchanged information on flight parameters and height and received messages from air traffic control centre about altitude.

Fifteen seconds before the crash the co-pilot says that the crew should abandon the landing attempt, but his remark is ignored and the landing attempt continued.

At this time, flight control twice issued the command “Horizon 101”, which means that pilots must abort landing immediately.

A few seconds later the sound of the plane hitting a tree is heard, followed by the cry of the co-pilot and air traffic controller.

At 10.41.05 the black boxes stopped recording sounds from the cockpit.

Source: Polish radio in English
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Re: Plane carryin Polish president crashed near Smolensk air

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sn26567 wrote:Smolensk crash transcripts released

Transcripts of black box recordings of the last minutes of the TU 154 which crashed in Smolensk on April 10 have been released by Poland’s government.

The 40-page document contains conversations between pilots and air traffic control and the times when they occurred, given in both Russian and Polish.

Some of the conversations were in Polish, some in English - air traffic control can be heard saying “pull up, pull up,” seconds before the plane hit the top of trees and crashed into forest near the Smolensk air strip at precisely 10.41, Russian time, on Saturday, April 10.

Pilots are then heard swearing and cursing in Polish as their fate becomes clear.

Visibility poor

The swearing occurred in the six seconds between the plane hitting the tree and it crashing.

It is obvious from the transcripts that the pilots were very concerned about poor visibility, caused by heavy fog. Fifteen minutes before the crash, a voice, identified as Mariusz Kazana, Poland’s Director of Diplomatic Protocol who was in the cabin at the time, asks about possibilities to land. The pilot answers that "at this moment, in such conditions, we won’t be ready to land.”

After a while the pilot says that they would make one landing attempt, but that they “probably won’t make it”.

In the cabin, during the last 30 minutes of the flight, there were, apart from the pilots, head stewardess Barbara Maciejczyk, Director of the Diplomatic Protocol Kazana and commander of the Polish Air Force General Andrzej Blasik.

After the pilots started the landing manoeuvre they, calmly, exchanged information on flight parameters and height and received messages from air traffic control centre about altitude.

Fifteen seconds before the crash the co-pilot says that the crew should abandon the landing attempt, but his remark is ignored and the landing attempt continued.

At this time, flight control twice issued the command “Horizon 101”, which means that pilots must abort landing immediately.

A few seconds later the sound of the plane hitting a tree is heard, followed by the cry of the co-pilot and air traffic controller.

At 10.41.05 the black boxes stopped recording sounds from the cockpit.

Source: Polish radio in English
there is an extra:
A Polish prosecutor who took part in a Russian probe into the crash has said he believes poor training, lack of money for test flights and incorrect flight procedures in the Polish air force all contributed to the accident.

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by sn26567 »

The final report written by the Russians and translated into English has been released. Here are the main conclusions:

The immediate cause of the accident was the failure of the crew to take a timely decision to proceed to an alternate airdrome although they were not once timely informed on the actual weather conditions at Smolensk "Severny" Airdrome that were significantly lower than the established airdrome minima; descent without visual contact with ground references to an altitude much lower than minimum descent altitude for go around (100 m) in order to establish visual flight as well as no reaction to the numerous TAWS warnings which led to controlled flight into terrain, aircraft destruction and death of the crew and passengers.

According to the conclusion made by the pilot-experts and aviation psychologists, the presence of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Air Forces in the cockpit until the collision exposed psychological pressure on the PIC’s decision to continue descent in the conditions of unjustified risk with a dominating aim of landing at any means.


The summary of the report can be found here: http://www.avherald.com/h?article=429ec5fa/0023&opt=0

Comments by Associated Press: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... 2e692d65dc

Analysis by Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70B4YE20110112
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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by regi »

Well, if a politician is angry because an official foreign report is negative about his compatriots, it shows his lack of program. ( shoot the messenger )

Still 1 thing bothers me: the report second cause is the psychological pressure been put on the pilots by the head of the armed forces. Question is how the Russians came to that conclusion. Black box, or just a presumption?

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by zibbo »

Hi Regi, they concluded from the recording in the black box, as far as I understand. The general was in the pilots' cabin at the time of the crash.

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by earthman »

Russian investigators have a long history of blaming crashes completely on the dead pilots, and clearing the still living (Russian!) air traffic controllers, their shoddy infrastructure, etc, of any and all blame.

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by tolipanebas »

For once I sit with the Russians on this, as the evidence is overwhelming.

The presidentical plane crashed during it's Xth landing attempt at an airport that was below minima....

It doesn't take much investigation to figure out somebody clearly was a bit too eager to land regardless any meteorological and technical limitations and that somebody was indeed likely not flying that tupolev that day....

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by sn26567 »

One worrying finding incriminating the pilot was also that "The captain's altimeter was set to standard pressure of 1013 (instead of QFE 993 as anticipated and briefed) during the final approach, the MAK annotated it was likely the navigator who selected the wrong altimeter setting. This error caused the altimeter to indicate about 160 meters too high (e.g. indicating 460 instead of 300 meters)." No surprise that the plane touched trees well before the threshold of the runway.
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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by earthman »

Nasty translation error in the english translation of the report, in the findings section:

3.1.12 During descent and approach the crew of the Tu-154 M aircraft was not once warned by the ATC and the crew of the Polish Yak-40 aircraft that had landed before at the Smolenk "Severny" Airdrome on the absence of required meteorological conditions for landing.

The same error occurs in the causes section.

I bet that the Polish phrase 'niejeden raz' exists in Russian as well. It means 'more than once' but literally translates to 'not one time' or 'not once'.

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by andorra-airport »

Poland Partly Blames Russia for Air Crash.

WARSAW—A pilot error was the ultimate cause of the airplane crash in which the Polish president and 95 others died in Russia last year, but Russian controllers and airport contributed to the accident, a Polish committee investigating into the crash said Friday.

The delegation—which included President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria, top commanders of the Polish army and the country's central bank governor—perished when the Polish government's Russian-made Tupolev aircraft in April 2010 crashed on approach in thick fog near a defunct airport in Smolensk, western Russia. The delegation was headed to an event commemorating a World War II massacre of Polish prisoners of war murdered in then Soviet Union on orders from Joseph Stalin.

The aircraft's pilots, who lacked sufficient training, aborted landing in thick fog too late to save the plane, the report said. But the Russian controllers also contributed to the accident by giving the crew incorrect information about their position relative to the airport, it added.

The committee's findings partially contradict an earlier report by a Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee, which put the entire blame on the Polish side, putting a strain on relations between Poland and Russia that had been improving since 2008.

The Polish committee said Friday the Polish pilots lacked training and only one in the crew of four was properly certified to fly the Tu-154M airplane. A number of procedural errors were also detected in the air force detachment in charge of transporting Poland's top officials, the committee said.

Defense Minister Bogdan Klich quit his post late Thursday as the government was preparing to publish the findings, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters Friday.

The aircraft commander, co-pilot, and navigator were trained "hastily, haphazardly and in violation of the respective training regulations," the 328-page report said. They had little experience flying in difficult weather conditions and without assistance from the instrument landing system, not installed at the defunct Russian airport, the document said.

The main pilot was the only one of the four crew members who was able to communicate in Russian. This was partly the reason why he was overloaded with work in the last phase of the flight, the report said.

When the crew aborted landing manually, the aircraft was below safe altitude, the committee said. The airplane hit a tree, which sheered off part of its left wing, and crashed into a ravine short of the airport's runway.

No signs have been found that the pilots were under pressure from the president or others to land, the committee said. This directly contradicts suggestions by the Moscow-based investigating committee, which in January said the country's air force commander, Gen. Andrzej Blasik, entered the cockpit of the Polish plane under the influence of alcohol and pressured the crew to land in heavy fog.

Poland repeatedly objected to those findings, reiterating Friday that no evidence of pressure on the pilots were found and that Gen. Blasik was "a passive observer" of the events in the cockpit during the final minutes of the flight. Polish officials also question the results of the autopsy Russian officials performed on Gen. Blasik's body.

The Russian side contributed to the crash, the Polish committee said Friday. Equipment at the Smolensk airport was out of order and incomplete, it said. Controllers at the airport, which wasn't in regular use, gave misleading information to the crew of the airplane carrying the Polish president, even though the instruments they were using could have allowed them to give correct information, the committee said.

The lighting system at the airport was defective and trees were growing near the runway, which may have obstructed view for both the crew and controllers, it said.

The Polish government's official stance on the crash, the report highlights disagreements about the causes of the crash between Poland and Russia. It has also roiled Poland's domestic political scene four months before parliamentary elections in the country. Conservative opposition led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the late president's identical twin brother, flatly rejected the government's document, saying it's "a lie" to ascribe the brunt of responsibility to the Polish side.

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said earlier this year international law absolved its air traffic controllers of any blame for the crash as the controllers had no right to prohibit the crew from landing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... SecondNews

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

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Via: http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews ... KC20121030

WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish investigators found traces of explosives on the wreckage of the government jet that crashed in Russia two years ago, killing Poland's president and 95 others, daily Rzeczpospolita reported on Tuesday.

Without citing sources, the newspaper said prosecutors and explosive experts who examined the remains of the plane in Russia found signs of TNT and nitroglycerin on the wings and in the cabin, including on 30 seats.

Traces of explosives were also found in the area where the Tu-154 crashed during its approach to a small airport near the Russian city of Smolensk on April 10, 2010, the daily reported.

(..)

The investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the traces of explosives come from unexploded bombs dating back to World War Two that could have remained in the area where the aircraft came down, the newspaper said.

:?: :!:

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by regi »

Quite possible. That area saw some of the most intensive fighting during WWII.

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk ai

Post by earthman »

The paper later retracted the statement.

And apparently they used handheld detectors which detected something which may or may not be explosives, but it is not yet known what that something might really be. For that, lab analysis is necessary.

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk airp't

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Polish President Reawakens Conspiracy Theory Over Kaczynski Plane Crash

Polish President Andrzej Duda has apparently decided to breathe new life into a conspiracy theory surrounding the 2010 plane crash which killed former Polish President Lech Kaczynski, praising the efforts of a group of experts who have suggested that an explosion onboard the plane caused the crash.

The president's plane went down on April 10, 2010 in Smolensk, Russia, resulting in the deaths of the president and dozens of Polish officials, who were on their way to a reconciliatory meeting with their Russian counterparts to pay tribute to the Polish officers killed by Soviet security forces during WWII.
Earlier this year, Polish investigators offered newly–decrypted evidence from the presidential plane's black box recordings, concluding that a "third party" had repeatedly interfered with the flight crew. The data also confirmed that Air Force General Andrzej Blasik, who was present in the cockpit up to the last moment, had repeatedly pressured the pilots to make attempts to land, despite warnings of bad weather at the Smolensk military airfield, including requests from a Russian air traffic controller to divert the plane to another airport.

Nevertheless, some Polish experts have refused to accept the conclusions of both the Russian and Polish investigations. On Saturday, President Duda, bolstered by the victory of the Law and Justice party at parliamentary elections last month, offered his support for those who doubt the official investigations' conclusions.

On Saturday, a presidential spokeswoman attended the Fourth Smolensk Conference in Warsaw, a gathering of experts devoted to challenging the official crash report's findings. As Gazeta Wyborcza explained, experts at the Smolensk Conference believe that the only possible explanation for the catastrophe is that an explosion onboard the president's plane caused the crash. The Conference has also demanded that the results of the official commission be invalidated.

Reading a statement from the president, the presidential spokeswoman emphasized that "the findings presented at the Smolensk Conferences up to this point have been valuable and relevant achievements. The official reports –both of the [Russian] MAK Commission and the [Former Prime Minister Leczek] Miller Commission cannot compete with the facts."

Speaking with Radio Poland, Professor Marek Zilich, an expert on international aviation law and a member of the Miller Commission, noted that "President Duda's letter signifies that he considers the work of the Smolensk Conference to constitute new findings, new data, new evidence, and if this is the case, it requires the State Commission on Aircraft Accidence Investigation to resume its work."

The president's statement comes just days after Polish military prosecutors reiterated that Kaczynski's plane was not brought down by an explosion.

Radio Poland emphasizes that as the investigation resumes, the Commission's report will now be under the direct supervision of Poland's incoming Minister of Defense –Antoni Macierewicz, a figure on the right-wing of the Law and Justice Party, which is itself a right nationalist party to the right of the moderate right Civic Platform government it defeated.

Even before taking up his post, Macierewicz has already gotten into hot water over a number of statements, including a suggestion that the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion have some truth,' and his comment that Poland and Russia have factually been in a state of war since Kaczynski's plane crash in 2010.

The politician himself, seated next to the presidential spokeswoman at the Smolensk Conference on Saturday, has said that the president's plane exploded in the air.

The new Polish government's position on the Smolensk catastrophe shouldn't come as a surprise, even if it does come as a worrying sign for Russian analysts. Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Lech's twin brother, has repeatedly suggested that Russia 'assassinated' his brother.

The president's initiative isn't the only controversy brought up by the incoming Law and Justice Party. Last week, Polish Foreign Minister designate Witold Waszczykowski told Polish media that Warsaw would take Russia to court if Moscow continued its "foot-dragging in the investigation" over the crash. Waszczykowski claimed that in hanging on to some of the wreckage for its own investigation, Russia was "using [it] for political purposes," adding that "we must therefore respond in a political manner."

Source: Russian Aviation
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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk airp't

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Polish Senate Deputy Speaker Blame Tusk for Former President Plane Crash

A deputy speaker of Poland's upper house of parliament, the Senate, put the responsibility for the 2010 plane crash on former Polish Prime Minister and current President of the European Council Donald Tusk.

On February 2, Polish Defense Ministry spokesman Bartlomiej Misiewicz said that Poland would resume the work of the commission investigating the crash of the passenger plane near the western Russian city of Smolensk, starting the inquiry from the very beginning again.

"The political responsibility [for the plane crash] rests on those who organized the visit [of Kaczynski to Russia]…Prime Minister [Donald Tusk] and Foreign Minister [Radoslaw Sikorski], who played diplomatic games with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin," Deputy Senate Marshal Adam Bielan told Polish Radio ZET.

He added that the plane crash could not be investigated properly while Tusk's Civic Platform party was in power. Civic Platform was the ruling Polish party for almost eight years until its defeat in the parliamentary elections that took place on November 16, 2015.

The Russia-made Tu-154M passenger plane carrying Kaczynski, his wife and a number of Polish high-ranking officials crashed in heavy fog as it attempted to land at an airfield near Smolensk, on April 10, 2010. None of the 96 people aboard the plane survived.

According to a report produced earlier by the Polish investigating commission, the pilots' erroneous actions could have caused the tragedy.

Source: Russian aviation

My comment: this new Polish government is dangerous! This was already demonstrated several times in the last few weeks. Lech Walesa, wake up again!
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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk airp't

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this new Polish government is dangerous
I am extremely sorry that, as a simple contributor, I need to remind you of a basic rule.

NO POLITICAL COMMENTS PLEASE.

Mind you, I am not saying you couldn't be right, not by a long way.

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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk airp't

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jan_olieslagers wrote:
this new Polish government is dangerous
I am extremely sorry that, as a simple contributor, I need to remind you of a basic rule.
NO POLITICAL COMMENTS PLEASE.
Mind you, I am not saying you couldn't be right, not by a long way.
De pot verwijt de ketel... Also in those forum rules:

Inappropriate behaviour
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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk airp't

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Poland to open coffins of all victims of 2010 presidential jet crash

Polish prosecutors said on Tuesday they would re-open the coffins of all victims of a 2010 presidential jet crash to examine the remains, a move likely to deepen political divisions surrounding the investigation.

The crash near Smolensk in western Russia killed 96 people including Poland's president Lech Kaczynski and his wife, as well as the central bank chief, top army brass and several lawmakers.

An inquiry by the previous centrist government returned a verdict of pilot error, but the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party led by Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw, says the crash may have been caused by an explosion on board.

Full article from Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-polan ... SKCN0Z72CQ
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Re: Plane carrying Polish president crashed near Smolensk airp't

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Polish President Says Exhumation of Smolensk Plane Crash Victims Necessary

Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Sunday it is necessary to exhume the bodies of victims of the 2010 plane crash near the Russian city of Smolensk.

In October, Poland's prosecutors announced exhumation of the bodies of victims, who had not been exhumed before. The procedure is scheduled for November 14 while relatives of the victims are opposing exhumation.

He also called on families of the victims to exercise tolerance towards the actions of the prosecution office as the crash is a matter of national importance and the biggest tragedy for Poland since the end of the Second World War

"As a lawyer I know one thing: polish laws … imply that the public prosecution in case of doubts must carry out a procedure such as exhumation," Duda told the PAP news agency in an interview.

On April 10, 2010, a Polish jet airliner carrying Kaczynski, his wife and officials crashed amid heavy fog as it attempted to land at an airfield near the Russian city of Smolensk. All 96 people on board died in the crash. The Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee said that the flight crew’s decision not to reroute the plane to an alternative aerodrome led to the crash.

In early February, the Polish Defense Ministry said that Warsaw would restart its investigation into the crash from the very beginning.

Source: Russian Aviation
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