The article lists only the most important people. But that's a very short list, as there were many more involved (full list in PL is here: http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/Wiadomosci/1,80273,7752563,Prezy...): There were ~60 people from the government, and ~20 more representatives of army, church and other organisations.
"The Polish president had been due in western Russia to commemorate the anniversary of the murder of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II.
The ceremonies were to be held at a site in the Katyn forest close to Smolensk, where 70 years ago members of the Soviet secret police executed more than 20,000 Polish officers captured after the Soviet Army invaded Poland in 1939."
It is worthwhile to emphasize these two paragraphs from the article, since presidency of the late president Kaczyński, among other things, has put great importance on reminding about Polish victims of Soviet totalitarianism. He insisted on commemorating the memory of victims of Sovet invasion on Poland, after the Germany, on 17.09.1939, as well as of Soviet occupation after 1945, when Russians defeated Germany in that part of Europe and replaced them in the role of the occupier. Memory about this victims has been prohibited until 1989, when Poland finally regained its political sovereignty.
There was already a problem with that before. In 2008 leaders of Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia wanted to fly in one plane to Gruzia. There was some arguing with the pilot who was refusing to fly in that situation (landed in Azerbaijan instead to maintain minimum of security). Yet, they do it again. Even if there is no policy against it, there will be in a month...
Belarussian aircraft informed crew about tough conditions in Smolensk airport - rather old, soviet military airfield - which after that was closed in case of heavy fog and the plane redirected to Minsk or Moscow. Unfortunately, the pilots decided to land anyway, even though three approaches to landing failed.
In fact Tu-154 was aged, but after solid and expensive modernization. For now it looks like a mistake of a pilot connected with really bad weather conditions.
You can't tell before an extensive investigation will have been done. Was the ILS active? Were there some navigation instrument failing? Was there a mechanical problem at this time on the aircraft? Was it just some human error (involved in 80% of aircraft accidents)? It's just too early to draw conclusions.
There is no ILS at this airport. That was a visual approach with almost zero visibility.
These aircraft are old, but have received extensive maintenance and upgrades, so a mechanical failure isn't likely. What you have to remember, though, is that a Tu-154 does not climb as well as a modern jet. So an aborted landing is much more dangerous, as you don't have enough engine power to climb quickly.
The pilot made four landing attempts (these are the best of pilots, so I suspect he was told to), the last one being fatal. Also, I don't expect a sane pilot to try to make a turn at low altitude right after an aborted landing, so the stories about the plane being in a turn probably mean the plane was already in a stall and falling.
Also, the runway at this airport is very short for the Tu-154 even at the best of times, so the pilot would have to touch down at the very beginning of the runway. In a dense fog that is extremely difficult.
It's a sad day. We might never know what really happened on board, but I strongly suspect that the pilots did not want to proceed and that either the presidential staff or one of the generals on board told the pilots to land anyway.
I had the opportunity to discuss that with a pilot who uses to land in Russia in different airports and explained us NDB landings in Russia. The pilot made only one landing attempt that failed, the other ones are the standard procedure in Russia where ATC take you down step by step in the traffic pattern - make you flight 3 or 4 circuits round over the runway. Also the captain didn't have much hours of flights compared to his years of experience - a common pattern in the east countries who don't have much money for military aircrafts expenses. It looks like a flying error at the end, he maybe have turned over the trees (probably because the NDB wasn't on the runway centerline), and was too low too early... Investigation will tell more hopefully.
Thanks. If the wing tip clipped a tree it was because the plane was turning. Assuming it wasn't windy, but foggy as stated, good avionics should've calculated that the tip would hit the ground, and good avionics would've detected trees. As such, a sound would've gone off to warn the pilot not to turn, or stop half way through a turn.
I could be wrong, but the pilot had already tried several times to land, and he was flying manually, and probably a good pilot, and there may have been a freak tree in terms of height, but I reckon he just didn't have modern enough instruments to help him avoid the crash.
I'm sorry, but you seem to know little about avionics. There are no 'tree detectors'.
No sane pilot would try a turn at this altitude, and the pilot knew very well what the altitude was because he had just aborted a landing attempt. It wasn't a turn, it was likely a stall.
Chrome has a nice translate feature, it is very easy to use and doesn't require copy-pasting or navigating away from the original page.
I've recently read (and was able to understand) articles written in German, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese. This feature is undervalued but it may save the world one day.
Interesting indeed. In summary: they knew the plane they were flying had problems, was hard to fly, dangerous, etc, and numerous pilots refused to fly it because of those issues, but they kept using it to save money. This is an article from May 2008.
Shades of Ron Brown's (Commerce Secretary under Clinton) last plane ride. Certain folks in Russia would have had plenty of reasons to cut off the head of Poland's government.
President Kaczyński was one of few our politicians who didn't wanted too many compromises with Russia. There was a tendency of not taking him seriously, as he had a harsh tongue for a politician and was generally considered a bit paranoid. But he actually was one of the few in Europe who actively opposed to Russian involvement in 2008 Georgia/Osetia conflict and was trying to reveal the tracks that the conflict might have been secretly escalated by Russia in the first place.
In our country people tend to know well how Russia government uses the policy of hiding or denying the facts. They used it when tsars ruled, then again during the communism, and again these times. Regardless of what really happened during today's crash, they will make obstacles to investigate it while pretending to be helpful.
Don't get me wrong, I know and like many Russian folks in person, but still their government is one of the crappiest (and most dangerous), by the standards of western democracies.
I wouldn't go too far. Cadence of President Kaczynski ends this year, and he would be probably beaten in the next elections. Moreover too many people died in this accident and any justified suspicions might lead to war. The fact it happened in Russia don't make it's not coincidence. But that's right, Mr. Kaczynski was known for his anti-kreml policy.
Not directly. But if there were justified suspicions, it would mean someone having a reason to say "agents of country X decimated the government of an EU/NATO country". It's unlikely there would be no response to that.
Assasination the President and many officials including all military leaders from coutry which is a member of NATO might worsen current not good relations between the coutries. Plus honour and polish national pride. But there's any reason it's not an accident at all.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I think the self-decapitation of a country's government through poor flight arrangements/policy is an interesting new phenomenon. Do you know of another occasion when a country basically lost most of its senior politicians and army general in the blink of an eye? Even at war this doesn't tend to happen.
I hope for the sake of the people of Iran, Israel and freedom-loving people everywhere, that rigged instrumentation or autopiloting can be placed on board official Iranian air transport.
What does Ahmadinejad fly? Are they fitted with special or standard avionics? Can something be prepared equipment-wise as pulled from the same type of aircraft, modified, and then swapped when he has landed in a foreign country or else on Iranian soil?
In Die Hard II the bad guys re-calibrated sea level -200 feet below the real ground level and one plane crashed straight into it... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6EfN4W2z0c
