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Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash [870]
No, he wasn't inexperienced overall but with Tupolevs, yes. Read the bold on page 112 and just after. Very relevant!
That's not really relevant - while his training was lacking, he had nearly 3000 hours on the Tupolev - with nearly 500 as commander. In fact, the bulk of his experience was on the Tupolev - so it's not right to call him inexperienced for a military pilot.
They should have closed the airport in accordance with FAP PP regulations.
For me, "no conditions for landing" are the same as "airport closed". They mean the same thing to all practical extents.
The LZC should have told them to make a decision sooner, see p262.
Perhaps. But there was no harm in letting them go down to 100m.
P263 shows that they continued to misguide them very late into proceedings.
Again - it wasn't entirely factual, but nothing on p.263 shows them to have done anything that threatened the safety of the flight.
P267 proves you wrong. They should have informed the crew about 5 secs after seeing them go down below the glidepath.
At that point, it was possibly too late anyway. Bear in mind that we're talking about a matter of seconds when the LZC was under heavy stress - it wasn't a precision approach, after all. He may simply have assumed that they had reached 100m and had initiated the go-around - which is a fair assumption to make.
As you can see though, from the report - the LZC's behaviour can be explained in several ways. So yes, although a contributory factor, it didn't directly lead to the destruction of the plane. It all goes back to the 100m point - which was broken.
He told them they were on path and that was illegal, esp given that they were wrong.
Yes, but it didn't cause the crash.
Well, as an outsider, having heard from people here now that he was a person not liked by Europe, Russia and present party of Poland, a report prepared in this medium by these people are less trustable than speculations.
Again - wild unsubstantiated speculation.
He wasn't liked, but he was still the President of Poland and respected for that.
Losing the election was guaranteed. His ratings were in the toilet, and he stood to lose badly - hence why he was going to Katyn for exposure. Incidentally - there were people on that flight from all over the political spectrum - not just his buddies.
I know why people are concentrating on what the russians might have done wrong. Because it's too painful to look at the man in charge, and his navigator.
Exactly. It hurts to realise that the bulk of the blame lies within Poland for the death of the President and many others. It's especially hurtful for those who were depending on him and his appointee (Blasik) to keep them safe from perceived dangers.
Human nature, I suppose.
