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.
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