Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash

That's what the big mystery is and will always will be - what was he doing using that?

It's a shame that the button press (if it was pressed) wasn't recorded - it would almost certainly provide a concrete answer as to what his intentions were.

You haven`t read the report I suppose . Now, after it has been issued we are not speculating as it has been done before . Now we know the facts . Several specialists signed that report and I trust them, more than you , because they investigated the evidences . So , I am sure you are a good pilot, but don`t judge cpt. Protasiuk before you read the facts .

Delph, you have your answer in the report. He was an inexperienced Tupolev pilot with incomplete training records. It's all there. He was unfamiliar with TAWS and how it operated in that region. He was under stress and wanted to buy thinking time so he made an instinctive though irrational decision. Look at page 215 of the report and the accompanying footnote.

Yes, they were cleared to 100m as the transcripts show. However, read on as it's the fullest version above. They continue on and were actually told that they were still on the correct glidepath and of sufficient height. They were initially too high but then dipped down very quickly, another ill-advised manuever due to the inability to quickly pull up, sth which should have been foremost on their minds. After standardising the pressure, they were 168m off and the ATC breached protocol in not informing them of the deviation level. If you read the report systematically, you will see clearly how they were negligent. These are experts, delph. The report is the culmination of extensive work, quoting relevant regulations all the time to back up their statements.

I've done training in the past and have seen this to be a common mistake for those who aren't comfortable with the TAWS system or those who're simply new to it.

It's a procedure that has to be drilled into you, right now if I were asleep but somehow heard a "terrain, terrain, whoop-whoop-pull-up" warning I bet you my left hand would pull, my right hand would push while my mouth would call out "max thrust" - but it wasn't like that until many, many training sessions. The procedures feels unnatural at first, too aggressive yet it's necessary.

Ps. We don't care if the "button press was recorded" or if the button was pressed, we look at engine instruments, that's all that matters. In a TAWS escape maneuver you don't have to look as you shove the thrust levers all the way in.

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Yes, I did read the report. ...and the report specifies training deficiencies. That's what I'm talking about. It also puts some blame on the Russian controllers. So I'm agreeing with the findings. I too trust the specialists, we simply seem to come to a different conclusion after reading it.

I didn't mention Judaism. Delphino mentioned his works with Jewish community.
(anyway, okay.)

By the way, people, you all say this discussion here is about final report.. technical details, etc etc..

But, he was a person who wasn't like by European politicians, not by Russiams either and his rival party is in power in Poland... These are your words.. So, how will i trust all these technical details, reports, etc?

(as a total outsider to this Smolensk incident, irrelevant one, so not biased one, i see all these are like theater... We have a saying here that can be translated as "you are playing (musical) instrument yourselves, you are dancing yourselves.".. )

Delph, the report tells you why he gave it all he had. He wanted to maintain the glidepath that he told was good. Check it out, p227

Page 226 with footnote 128 tells you what you need to know.

Page 227 covers TAWS and answers your question.

Nomad, they were delph's words, not mine. Please read above. Maybe Monia said it too. I've kept such statements off of this thread, sticking to the data in the report.

Seanus, be fair - he wasn't inexperienced, but his training was...well...interesting.


Unless it was a precision approach (it wasn't) - what they were told was an irrelevance - at 130m, they had to either spot the runway or go around. There wasn't any other choice open to them - what they did was simply wrong.

At 0635 - they were told clearly that at 100m, they should prepare to go-around. But again - the Tupolev had the requirement of spotting the runway at 130m, not 100m - of course, the ATC guys wouldn't know the specific minimums for each plane.

At 0637 - the Yak guys told them that visibility was down to 200m.

Seanus - at no point after they crossed the 100m barrier did they receive any messages about being on the glidepath. The last message came in at 114m above the runway. After that, the next communication was the Horizon command.

Again - responsibility to keep that plane no lower than 100m without clearance lies with the commander. It simply wasn't a precision approach - hence why the "on glidepath" remarks should have been treated for what they were - advisory and not binding.


Because most of us who know anything trust the authors of the report more than wild speculation. We also realise that Lech Kaczynski was headed for a devastating electoral defeat - at one point before the accident, he was forecast to lose in the 1st round. There was simply nothing to be gained by making a martyr out of him.


As above - at 130m, he should have either spotted the runway or leave. Nothing else was legal in the circumstances.

(Sky : thank you, as always, for your insight into how aviation works - I appreciate it)

You bet. As in any profession it drives us nuts when people create their own scenarios but I don't blame anyone for doing so, normal human behavior I guess. When I read an article about a medical mishap I always imagine in my head what'd happened but as my ex-wife often said I was way wrong (she works in the medical field). I guess it just sucks when a discussion involves an accident where people had died, yet that's just how it is, I suppose.

No, he wasn't inexperienced overall but with Tupolevs, yes. Read the bold on page 112 and just after. Very relevant!

They should have closed the airport in accordance with FAP PP regulations.

The LZC should have told them to make a decision sooner, see p262.

P263 shows that they continued to misguide them very late into proceedings.

P267 proves you wrong. They should have informed the crew about 5 secs after seeing them go down below the glidepath.

He told them they were on path and that was illegal, esp given that they were wrong.

The radars should have been tested for malfunctioning but the Russians had already tampered with them by then.

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.. So, I'll speculate more.. His lose of election maybe wasn't guarantee. Even if he lost election, then, only Kacynski would lose the power. There were 96 more people there of whom half of them would probably have stayed at power even Kaczynski lost the election.

(I understand you are trying to say that there was no reason for assassination.. but, it seems there was.. However, still, existence of reason for assassination doesn't mean assassination happened.. but, proof of accident or assassination in this case, can't be done by these reports that were prepared by a surrounding whole community, including EU, Europe, Russia, partially Poland, etc who weren't liking him. So, rather than technical details, somethings else need to be discussed if the goal is really to understand assassination or accident. Maybe, in time, someone/s will speak/confessions, who knows.)

Nomad, the report is far more credible than Anodina's one through MAK, that's for sure.

There needs to be a clear-up debate on the issue by sticking to known facts and best-fit scenarios thereafter based on the views of experts. Until then, it's word against word.

Anyway, tbc :)

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.


For me, "no conditions for landing" are the same as "airport closed". They mean the same thing to all practical extents.


Perhaps. But there was no harm in letting them go down to 100m.


Again - it wasn't entirely factual, but nothing on p.263 shows them to have done anything that threatened the safety of the flight.


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.


Yes, but it didn't cause the crash.


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.


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.

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.

Quote, page 132 of the final report.
Because the Regiment's documentation and the pilot's Pilot/Navigator Logbook are
short of an entry that he passed the check ride (oral exam and a flight test) on Tu-154M, it is
evident that under RL-2006 § 13 item 6, on 10.04.2010 the pilot had no recencies to
navigate the Tu-154M aircraft. ...
...
...
The navigator had not his navigational skills checked on Tu-154M aircraft.

They had no bussiness flying that plane.
mswia.datacenter-poland.pl/FinalReportTu-154M.pdf

I don't see any difference than the report about twin-towers. Twin-Towers report became like porous papers with many holes, by "speculations!", but, nothing changed.. except Bush lost the elections at the end. This Smolensk report maybe is prepared better, but, it doesn't matter. There are many doubts. My doubts aren't important, doubts of ordinary Poles are important and I don't think many of them read the report even. Why? Ordinary Poles too know that the report is non-credible.

(btw, Medyedev started a revolution in Russia top level? Heard the news that many generals are resigning there, requested by Medyedev.)

No. Most of them are either happy to believe the news source (such as those who watch TVN24) - or they already think that the report is full of lies and thus there's no point reading it.

Have you read it? What's your knowledge of aviation? Perhaps could you explain to us, as a lay person, why we don't have a Decision Height in an NDB approach?

Ah...silence.

With that one sentence I lost the whatever was left of my respect for you, nomad.

He's just another one of those guys who spends his life reading conspiracy theories in an attempt to find THE TRUTH, even when it's presented in front of him in black and white.

Still, I wonder what makes him better than those many experts that participated in the Polish investigation.

He did? Just learned something new. :)

Can somebody explain to me why the Air Traffic Controller was telling the pilots "On course and path" and "Continue Approach" (page 214 of report) when they clearly were not on course and not on the right landing path?

Non-precision approaches are, as the name implies, very "non-precise". Think of you holding a compass in your hand and trying to "home-in" on a specific heading (it's called bearing when using an NDB) while the needle swings back and forth. Then a person who's standing several miles in front of you looks at a blip on radar which refreshes every 15-30 seconds or so and says something like "from where I'm standing you're heading this way.". I'm very surprised they even accepted this approach, it's the least precise of the non-precision approaches and frankly pilots seldom get to "shoot them", smaller airplanes do and in some areas they're still common but most often the NDB beacon is just a part on a precision approach, for example an ILS (instrument-landing-system) might use the NDB as a confirmation of a fix (the needles swing from TO to FROM as you're overflying it).

So it's an unusual approach nowadays and trust me, what the ATC tells me when I'm shooting it is the least of my concern, it's hard enough to stay on course from inside the cockpit, his/her radar screen with the lag, etc, is even less precise. I need the ATC for one thing, give me the visibility, ceiling, winds. Then it's up to me to decide if I'm legal to do it (all airlines, companies, etc have different ops-specs and ATC seldom knows which rules apply to which airline, they're very similar most of the time but not always).

If I'm legal I'll request the approach, once it's offered to me and I accepted it then it's my call on aborting it unless the runway gets occupied by a truck, etc. then the tower lets us know. If I lose the NDB signal, if the conditions worsen to a point I think it's unsafe, etc. then I'll call a missed approach. The tower controller's job at this point is to be an observer. Once on the ground I'll need him/her for taxi clearances, in the air I'm basically on my own. I've repeated "I" in this reply to emphasize the captain's responsibility, in reality we decide as a crew, both pilots.

Hope this clarifies it somewhat.

The report also says that the Il-76 and the Yak40 had the same issues.

Anyway, the entire report is a really fascinating read. The conversations that took part behind the scenes paints a really good picture of "half-assing" things and massive unprofessional behavior from just about everyone involved. Everything was really sloppy, started well before the plane took off, and continued long after the crash...

Delph, read what f stop wrote in post 142. You clearly haven't read his real flying experience or have taken the info from another source. He had no business in that plane and his training was not conducted properly and filled with holes. There is A LOT of criticism of his competence in the report I posted.

There were huge mistakes on both sides but we see the Polish and Russian psyche in some to say it was completely the other side's fault. That was why an international investigation was called for.

Worth pointing out that despite not being exactly on course, they (most of the time) were within the tolerances allowed.

What might be interesting is if you go back and look at his qualifications - he wasn't qualified to make such an approach in those conditions. In fact, even if you assume that the "visibility : 400m" is correct - then he had no business even attempting such an approach.


For me, the most interesting is the way that they repaired the plane after a bird-strike 2 days before. Had no influence on the accident, yet shows what the culture was there.

They certainly didn't but he started to accelerate to catch up on the glidescope but starting veering off course. The negligence on the Russian side was palpable too. The simple reality is the distortion caused by normalising the pressure and paying attention to the wrong meters. The Russian radars should have read their course but they seem to have panicked too.

Here, below , is a brief desription of his competencies and skills:

Vast parts of the report and its conclusions concerned the errors in pilot`s training and mistakes, which he have allegedly committed.This suggests a low level of his skills. It was repeated by the media around the world relying on the official Polish origin of this information based on MAK report and now on Polish report .But the truth is very different : you can find out about his skills from many sources and also from a book, which was published not long time ago , where it is written -


As you can see from the professional`s opinions ; he was experienced pilot, he was named a champion , the best pilot , extremly intelligent person .

Those lies were inficted in just 3 days after the crash by the Russian machine of deception and distortion.

His total flight time was 3531 hours, the Tu-154M aircraft [b]2907 hours including 445 hours as a commander

I find it to be an insult to repeat those lies.

/wiki/Arkadiusz_Protasiuk

Maybe we get back to real life in this discussion? Does anybody in Poland gives a fig about these reports? I do not think so, at least not the normal people.

Amongst my friends (almost all of them Polish) and at work (100% Polish) nobody even talks about this.
OK, there were some cynical comments in the morning over a coffee about it but that was all.
It is PIS who carry their obsession into infinity. Did they not want to prove they are not a single-issue party :)

Russian controllers mistakes :
On page 295 we can read :

most people either don't care, have already put it in the past, made up their own mind ages ago, are fed up with it.

Monia, there is clearly a mixed opinion of him but he hadn't piloted a Tupolev flight in either 2008 or 2009 according to the report. Sometimes it can be like a bike or a car but conditions complicate the matter and he was rusty. You can't make such a basic error if so experienced. Reading the wrong meters is very amateurish indeed.

The Russian ATC simply had to alert them given the discrepancy in the readings. 168m is a large drop. Protasiuk claimed to know about the ravine but somehow the Russian ATC didn't correct their position for them. They should have asked them why they were off course and they didn't.

mobile.thestar.com/mobile/world/article/1032149
insufficient experience cited as a reason here. It does strike me as odd as he was generally experienced. It makes you wonder who is lying here in the political set-up as they simply both can't be correct.

Really Sobieski? Why did you select that nick, if you are not Polish? For only to disguise yourself while making sarcastic comments ?

Maybe because you don`t speak good Polish and you are not Polish that`s why you have no interests in this subject . Well , Polish people were not interested too much in the death od Diana (the case of the death of just one important person ) , but the Brits have been talking about this subject for 10 years .

But I couldn`t blame them for them . A lot of conspiracy theories emerged too . However, no one in Poland was mocking about Brits over it .

In this case, when the crash took place just one year ago and almost 100 of top people died , don`t give me a lesson over this issue what I should do , as it is very impolite and improper .

Don`t take part in this discussion, if you are so disgusted . ;(