Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash

Read the whole article first . pls .

He is pointing out the facts, which made the Russian side responsible, but as always the truth must be obscured and distorted the way the Russians want, as such behavior was always their national trait.

Why did they lie about the poor command of Russian language by polish pilot, while it was quite contrary to that statement and his command was excellent?

Why did the Russian ATC controller disappeared and then retired and never came back to serve his duties after the crash . Just ask yourself such question . Why ?

Maybe they felt he was ignoring their warnings due to a lack of understanding.

He was due to retire and was likely pushed out by senior Russian officials so as to vacate the spotlight.

Certainly, shall we have some fun?


Not true in the slightest. In fact, many people thought that while it was a cruel coincidence, they also realised that trying to land a plane in heavy fog at an airport which wasn't equipped with an ILS (or similar) system was always going to be difficult. It was only ever a minority in Poland that was screaming RUSSIA MURDER.


Again, more groundless speculation. Do you really, honestly think that the BOR are so useless (and Kaczynski so inept as not to order it?) as to not check a plane thoroughly for any sort of bugging device?


What ILS at Smolensk-North? It didn't exist! The airport was closed, remember?


What ILS ground transmitters?


The Yak landed without clearance - and could've easily crashed too. Landing safely isn't and wasn't the same thing as approaching safely.


As the report says, confirmed with Google Earth - the outer NDB marker was actually at close to 7km from the runway.


Has to be an error? The TU-154 is well known for the high landing speed - for instance, the B version has a landing speed of around 230km/h - and the M variant is higher.


Covered above. Perhaps he might want to tell me what a Civil convention has to do with a military flight.


Strong? He clearly doesn't realise that the Polish Presidency is a rather weak position with little executive power.

Too easy.

It is very, very rare that you can convince somebody on the internet forum, that they are wrong. I don't even try any more. The most you can do is express your opinion, the rest is hardly worth the aggravation.

But, I do wish Monia would listen to reason and free herself..

You see that flight to Smolensk as a military flight?

Her intentions are honest, but I think she's been swayed by reading too many "opinion" pieces that outright lie about things, like the most recent one she posted.

Many people found it impossible to grasp that Smolensk-North was so utterly lacking in equipment - but that's because they only ever fly from Civilian Airport A to Civilian Airport B on a commercial service.

... this might be worth watching. I'll watch it and let others know the content of it. It sets out to ask a few hard questions so it should be revealing. It's about the Smoleńsk crash first and foremost.

I'm not going to argue with you and convince you by all means . I gave you important facts and now you decide using your own conscience.

I devoted to this subject all my free time this Saturday and Sunday, sitting on the report and preparing my comments. I gave you the facts, and you are now, in accordance with the principle of the master Greek rhetorician Lysias, who said:- I said- You heard- You give sentence , able to make up your minds.

I did it , not just to convince my opponents, but for few others, who themselves may have read with interest what I wrote and that. broadened their knowledge and helped to draw conclusions..

Once again, someone will ask, why?

Because the lessons offered by history are most important for us. We , Poles, suffered too much over the course of our past . But now, in times of free and independent Polish state and the internet era , we can learn much more than some vague information Poles were given by grim communist-era dictators , where truth was the good of the un known. and scarcely rationed .

You some British habitual doubters are overwhelmed by the whole Russian method , but bear in mind , you have never experienced communist brain washing .

And that would l be all :):):).

Did you watch the video, Monia? It might help your case. It's in Polish but with English subtitles.

Which alters nothing. We are not talking about righting the wrongs of the past. We are not insulting Poland by letting the truth be bent to sort nationalistic sensibilities. We are interested only in the truth. And the truth is that nobody else except Poles are at fault.

Especially with tragedies, we stubbornly cling to give them more meaning than just what it was: a mistake, oversight, a decision that could have been made many times without much notice, until one day when cosmic law bunches few of them together and changes the world. It could have been just that, no?

Exactly. And it's tragic that there is a tendency for some to make an issue, to shift the blame for whatever reason. In the most extreme case to allege a conspiracy :-(

If this pilot came back to life and read what Monia wrote he would commit suicide.

it might be more polite to simply say that you disagree with her.

it's southern! Sometimes he misses the mark, but it's always bombastic.

dziennikwschodni.pl/assets/pdf/DW44922729.PDF
a vital read. The Russians clearly knew, through correspondence, who the pilot would be and had their ready-made pretext. Delph, I encourage you to read pp190-200 regarding meteorological conditions. The sheer incompetence on the Russian side was incredible! Now, the golden question is whether or not this had a material impact on the ultimate outcome, esp if you combine it with the lack of updates on them being off the right glidepath.

Thanks for that link . Yes, I have just watched it .

This video shows the political climate and background before and after the crash. It outlines the rather reluctant attitude of Western Europe polititians towards Mr. L. Kaczynski. He was the character you did not like in the political salons of Europe. That`s why there was no pressure to investigate the case properly .

It's best to avoid reading too much into it and go with the 328-page report in post 144 above. It shows that the Polish side made the bigger blunders BUT the Russian side also committed a catalogue of errors and did things they weren't allowed to do. They should have been more vigilant when the plane deviated outwith prescribed limits. It's a long read but you can cut through some parts. Try pp250-265. I can point you out to the main parts which make the position pretty clear.

What he says it is always abysmal pathetic .

Try the conclusions from page 300, Monia. This effectively summarises it without you really missing any key details.

I don't even think it was incompetence, just the usual Russian lack-of-decision making. Same problem exists in Poland, too.


Nope - as said above by several people, the barometric altimeter was correct, as confirmed by General Blasik. The lack of information isn't really much of a problem - you go by what you can see regardless of forecasts. And - Smolensk made it clear - "no conditions for landing". They had the information needed - and chose to ignore it for reasons best known to themselves.


It's worth pointing out that while he wasn't exactly liked, he was heading for a devastating election defeat - which was far more useful for PO and Europe than a plane crash which killed him and made him a martyr among certain people.

Most observers made the huge mistake of assuming that the President had power (especially American observers) - when in reality, he had barely any.

I read it yesterday , the whole thing .

Generally, he was seen as stubborn and uncooperative. A lot of anti-EU rhetoric too - but precious little action. The fact that he signed the Lisbon agreement when he didn't have to was his worst hour.

Mind you - he was also seen in a good light for some of his real successes, such as his work with the Jewish community.

I've sort of migrated to the other forum for personal reasons but I like to check up on some old friends here as well.

I noticed this thread came up again; I remember we had several on this very same subject in the past, one thread I even started myself. I've reviewed the final findings of the Polish NTSB (not sure what the actual acronym is) and feel that it's pretty much what I and many of us here said before.

There's a very strong bond between pilots, a fraternity if you so will and it doesn't matter what country, airline, airplane, etc. that's involved. When one dies we all mourn. I mourned the pilots involved in the Smolensk accident; it was a little "personal" to me. As I've said here somewhere before a relative of ours was murdered in Katyń and my mom to this day keeps the last letter he wrote to his then newlywed wife, he never came back. ...and one day that letter will be mine, my mom already told me that.

So I don't feel any particular "love" for the Russians and in fact I honestly believe that Russians as a nations have brought more death, tyranny, murder and oppression to the world than any other nation on earth. Whether under the tsar or the commissar - spilling other people's blood was easy for them. Well, that's history and that's politics, in daily life I try to stay as unbiased as I can, needless to say sometimes I succeed better than some other times.

Anyways, I mention all this to explain that as a pilot, both mil and civ, I feel a tremendous kinship with other pilots. Never flown Russian built airplanes but in the past I have flown smaller types that were similar in performance to the Tupolev involved, I've also talked to Russian and Kazakh pilots who had that experience. I choose to withhold the specifics of my flying as I'm still part time national guard and as such need to be careful since my civilian job is primarily overseas.

Having said all that, and as much as it hurts to say, there were some major errors made by the crew. Yes, the Russians made mistakes too, especially with the investigation and I explained it before and still believe that however there's a reason why there's only one captain, or commander, in the cockpit. Just like two chefs in the kitchen might become a danger to each other the very same would apply to having two captains pilot an aircraft. A tower controller will never, ever be in charge of an airplane. Neither will a supervisor who enters the cockpit! No matter what country's military you're in, there's only one captain in the cockpit, period!

An old pilot saying states "Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make all of them yourself!"

That's why I'm speaking up here, mistakes made in Smolensk by the controllers AND the pilots, will be used in future training programs and will save other pilots' and other passengers' lives. If, God forbid, my errors cause people's lives one day I would want for other pilots to learn from my mistakes. I'm absolutely certain Arkadiusz and Robert would've wanted the same.

The lack of decision making was highly incompetent here, delph. Read the transcripts from the report I posted above.

Yes but you haven't commented on the switching of the VBS-SVS altimeter being switched to standard pressure, delph. This led to a 168m distortion in thought position Vs actual position and TAWS was not activated as a result, not til later. This is the crux of the matter, not what Blasik thought.

Delph, read the report. Forecasts are very important and that will be clear. The no conditions for landing was abandoned as they continued to claim they were on the right glide path. They were outside of acceptable parameters and the ATC had to know this. The crew were under the mistaken belief that they were higher due to the change to standard pressure.

Sky, the problem is in the report and the one I've mentioned above.

It is not very hard to figure it out , don`t you think ?

Let me think , hmmm maybe oil , gas, trade with Russia , big economical market for sales of EU goods . You know Russia puts embargo on specific country, whenever it wants . Poland suffered it many years, because of Kaczyński politics .No one in Poland wants it to repeat .Poland`s priority is to normalize mutual affairs with Russia . It is Poland valuable trade partner . That`s a long story , a subject for another thread :). No sane polititian wants those good relations to worsen in the name of the late president .

IF, everything you and some others here say is correct (a huge IF), the EGPWS (TAWS) gave plenty of warning time to execute a safe CFIT (controlled-flight-into-terrain) maneuver, in fact, listening to the tapes I still cringe each time I realize how late the thrust levers are advanced. I disregard all the what-if's and the "speculation" scenarios; if you look just at the execution of the missed approach you quickly realize it was a non-survivable mistake.

What you say it is very true , but read the report , the whole contents , as a pilot you will even understand more than me .

But you see, I am an airforce pilot`s daughter and I have some deeper knowledge and compassion than the average person . Maybe because I was faced with deaths of my friend`s fathers on every day basis I want the truth to be said out loud , more than most of you . I was told way too often that it was the pilot`s mistake . That was always the most convenient way.

It's hard to comment because we can only speculate as to why - my feeling is the same as they say in the report - that he wanted to shut the TAWS system up. But...still. Lunacy.


No, not quite. They were cleared to 100m - no more. Given that the Tupolev minima was 130m, in reality, they should have obeyed that rather than the controllers. It wasn't a precision approach - so the ATC guidance was simply advisory in nature.

The theory that the commander did what he did on many occasions (press the TOGA button and wait) does make sense - possibly because it always worked before, as he would've been making ILS landings with the Tupolev - and when he tried to do the same thing here, it caught him out.

Still - my golden question - why did he go below 100m when not cleared to do so?

You don't use TOGA for an EGPWS warning, instead you use fire-wall thrust, aka all you've got. Anyways, gotta get some sleep, nite nite.