Decoded talks inside Poland's president's plane are released in Internet

In thick fog? Are you mad? Have you no concept of what an ILS is? That's as feeble as most 9/11 official line defences.

Lies don't matter? They gave nothing in that transcript.

Were you there? Were you a survivor? You are merely going on press accounts.

Get what? You make the same mistake again and again and again. I'm just questioning the evidence. Look back at some of my earlier posts. I have never advanced a highly plausible conspiracy theory as I believe in the official line. However, some things just don't add up but you choose to ignore them.

yes i am mad because the fig was thick?? wtf?


does it really matter whether they said kurwa or jezu? seriously?


because as i said, some of the stuff you seem to be hanging on to is really inconsequential.. like the example above.. which word they said doesn't matter.. the fact is the slammed the ground.. bam, dead.

No, it's just the image you conjur up of a plane on autopilot at a time when it needed a pilot, given that he was looking frantically for the runway. Tell me, where was the guidance from ground control?

It's the principle of lying that I take issue with. It was to be too sensitive to publish apparently. I see nothing of that nature in print which makes me feel that they edited a lot.

I didn't say it was important at all in the sense of what word it was. What else in my analysis doesn't add up? I even put forward a technological justification above for the official line.

they told them to divert.. but the PL plane decided to try.. then ran into the ground.. why is that the russian's fault?

to me the transcript are what i expected, for the most part.. i see no reason to question any of the info as it sure seems exactly on the money.. some of the questions you keep asking, you will never get the answers to as the crew is dead.. what i have posted along with a few pilots here, sure looks plausible and definitely along the lines of this being an terrible accident.. there have been plenty of similar examples given.. i see no real reason to think anything but fair play from the russian investigators..

Where did I say it was the Russian's fault? Why the need for decoding when we have you as an eyewitness, right plk123?

At the very least, we should have an online, international debate with leading pilots from around the world. That would be in tune with openness and transparency.

the investigation is still in it's infancy, really so we need to give it a lot of time.. it's going to be years before everything has been gone over..

you didn't say it was Russia's fault but you sure insinuated it by saying where was their support from the tower at the airport.. we'll know more as the time goes by..

Well, you don't seem to be giving it a lot of time at all. You seem VERY sure of what happened so what are you giving all that time for? YEARS??

I was saying that he could have tried to navigate them in as best possible. There is no evidence that they did. Yes, he gave the order to divert but there needed to be some follow through.

Read what you have written above, plk123. You write like an eyewitness so what do you need cleared up?

yet..


because i am sure it was pilot error.. nothing else.. now, i don't know all the details and those will come with time and will prove what i and others think happened.. i am sure of it..

Trust me, that would have been the first thing that Putin did to show that all reasonable steps had been taken. I couldn't understand the Russian exchange when Tusk was there but snippets I got. Nobody has been fired on the Russian side and, trust me, the penalty would have been severe for any breach of protocol of this magnitude. I imagine Russian ground control did their job admirably but......no documented evidence.

What other details don't you know? Are those other details relevant to it being pilot error or not? Are those as of yet unknown details evidence? ;) ;) You want that evidence to corroborate your hypothesis?

O Rly? And for how long, do you think, Russians would stand such a thing?


I am not a russophobe, as I am not afraid of Russians.


So should I refuse to lern from past mistakes? For you it is living in the past. For me, it is common sense.

Well said, kondzior. All you get is denial from certain characters, no logical and reasonable discussion. I like convex here, sometimes skysoulmate. Convex approaches it from a technical perspective and is, to my knowledge, not on any elite payroll :)

Plk123 seems to have a crystal ball. He can tell you the future of the world ;)

Talks inside:

Captain pilot: Sir president, there is heavy fog outside, i passing landing for an hour or to land onto another airport.

President: No, land down here.

Pilot: But, sir, it is risky.

President: Whatever, land down!

Pilot: But, sir...

President: Pilot, I am president. Do what I saying.!

Pilot: (... talking to himself slowly.. he too can die.. but, if he doesnt listen to order of president, he will be in jail or will lose his job and money or he wont be good for him anyway... he thinks he has no other choice, but, attempt to land down.)

crash....

It didn't have an ILS as is commonly understood - there was some crude Russian system, but it wasn't anywhere near enough to take the plane safely down to/near the runway.


He was only up against it by descending below minimums. If he had stayed at 100m - there wouldn't have been a problem.


The problem is that there was no ILS installed at Smolensk-North.


There was as much as they could provide. "On glidescope" and "on course" is all they could give, with the facilities available to them.


When the autopilot disengaged, it's possible that they attempted to pull up. It's not possible to say from the voice recorder - but there may be a record of their final actions on the other black box. Either way, they had what, 6 seconds to pull up? No way was that plane going to react fast enough!

I still don't understand this part. How did they get so low with autopilot on?

Well, it shows relative technological development. MLS, I think, was first introduced in 2006. Heathrow airport used that tech because, as we know, it gets foggy there quite often. Not having ILS, Delph? Are you sure? What of Azimuth, Delph?

I just can't, for the world of me, understand why they dipped. I've heard some nonsense about terrain dip but that would have been a foolish mistake.

They actually dropped below the level of the runway...so there was no way they were going to reach the runway without running into the ground first....

Convex might be able to shed some light on it - I don't understand it either. Allowing the autopilot to take them down to 100m makes sense, but I don't get why the autopilot was set to take them lower.


Positive. There's no equipment at Smolensk-North that indicates the existence of an ILS system, nor is there anything online whatsoever that suggests that one is installed there. There is a rudimentary Russian system there - but it's not going to do the job of a properly installed ILS.


As in the direction of flight? As far as we know right now (and it can't be said for certain, the data hasn't been published yet) - they were on course for the runway. But certainly, from what's been pieced together, they came in way too steep in the final seconds of flight.


Well, the dip in the terrain is there, as independently verified by different sources. The crew would have been aware of it - but given the situation, the captain may simply have allowed it to escape his mind in the hope of spotting the runway.

if it shows i am wrong then i am fine with that..

there will be more data coming out over the next year or two.. i'm not familiar with russian investigative protocol but it takes years in the USA to get the exact reason for a plane crash..


you seem to think they'd have a choice.. russia isn't that powerful


maybe but your mistrust of them doesn't let you look at things in normal light.


dig out my early posts here and tell me i haven't been right from the start.. plus, you are tend to see where things aren't, nothing that i am going to say is going to sway you one bit.. i based my stand on what i saw right from the start.. and like i said, i doubt anything out there will change the results.


oh come on now.. seanus knows that russians are monkeying with the evidence..


many pilots/planes land via the auto pilot.. so that seems totally reasonable.. if you land and feel a jerk when touching down, that is most likely the autopilot.. pilots are much smoother.


it sure seems they weren't paying attention to the instruments.. and i bet they were looking out the windows and thus slammed the ground as the fog was way heavy..


and way off kilter.. the missed the runway by a "mile"


bingo but that won't stop seanus from not understanding why..

Nothing like some good Anti-Polish propaganda and mocking the Polish dead. How disgusting.

Plk123, sway me from what exactly?

You yourself said that there is much waiting to be done so how can I say if you are right or wrong?

None of us know of monkeying.

Oh, I understand why. I'm just amazed at how foolish they were.

So, where is the relevant info in the transcript about spotting the runway? It would have been of concern to them well before the final approach.

You don't relay know much about Russians, do you?


In sum I have spent almost 10 years in Russia. Did you? I do know what can be expected of them. On the surface, Russians may seem friendly and funny, but they'll show theirs true colors sooner or latter. Russian will never tell the truth if he can lie. At the very least, when dealing with non-Russian.


In contemporary black boxes data it stored in stacked arrays of memory chips. Investigators can simply play it back on the recorder by connecting it to a readout system. With contemporary recorders, investigators can extract stored data in a matter of minutes.

Not in this case. There was no ILS system installed that would take the plane onto the runway - as far as I remember, it was set to control descent and speed, nothing more. It certainly wasn't using any form of ILS to take the plane onto the runway.


They came short, but it seems that they were definitely on course until hitting the tree. The comments from ATC about "being on glideslope" are somewhat misleading to Western ears - it seems that the phrase in this context means that they were simply headed for the runway.

Seanus, something you have to bear in mind here - they had a matter of seconds between doing nothing wrong (to 100m) and losing control of the plane.


Must be a Slavic trait, because I've seen and heard the same from Poles.

Well, you said it for me, Delph (the last point you made) :)

I agree, they had a matter of seconds. So why not pull up as an impulsive measure given their lack of rational reaction time?

Well - we know that the autopilot/autothrottle disconnected. That can be done by pushing a button, or more likely, by using one of the flight control sticks. But at that point - even if they pulled up hard, the plane would still have continued to drop about 30m or so (this is known to be a "feature" of the TU-154) - so by that point, the plane was lost.

It seems that there's a possibility that the captain was attempting to do what is called a "scud run" - and he may not have wanted to discuss this in front of his CIC, who obviously might not be rather impressed with him doing such a thing.

Incidentally, it would seem that this transcript has debunked the rumour of the lights being changed at Smolensk - but I'm not sure.

The message to pull up was first given earlier. This is why we need an academic international debate with eminent experts. Nothing less will do!

It's worth noting that the Russian ATC told the crew that they couldn't accept them - but they attempted a landing regardless. Someone has the hypothesis that the Polish crew deliberately deceived the ATC - but that's a matter of interpretation.


Well, the first officer said "go around" about 14 seconds before impact. If the captain had indeed decided to go around at that time, then the plane would have likely been saved. But he chose to ignore it - and crucially, the FO didn't take control.

If 'go around' was so logical, why didn't he do it?

This is part of the mystery. In all fairness, he had seconds to decide - it wasn't like he had time to mull over the options in his head. Why didn't he do it? Well - perhaps he felt with his superior experience that he could make it, especially as he alludes to having done something similar in Gdansk. Why didn't the FO do something? Well - that's a training issue.

Timescale wise - the Captain had about 13 seconds after the FO said "go around" and about 11 seconds after ATC said so. We know that the TU-154 in landing configuration loses about 30m when changing from descent to climb - so he would have had to have had pulled up almost instantly when hearing the FO say so. By the time the ATC realised what he was doing, the plane was possibly already lost.

The more crucial thing is why they attempted to land despite being told by Smolensk North that there are no conditions for landing.

Ultimately, there's no conspiracy theory here - apart from the question of just what is going on with Polish Air Force training!

Well, I'm sure plk123 has all the answers ;)

I just noticed - by "the Captain had..." - that was the time left before the end of recording. In reality, he had to react almost instantly after the FO said "go around" - and didn't.