Polish final report on Smoleńsk aircrash

It has become overly politicised so we are doing a good thing by discussing the details here. The truth matters!

Seanus , thank you that after some time , you are trying to understand many mutual dependencies and your position is close to objective now in contrast to what you stated only 2 days ago . This is , in my opinion , the effect of reading the report . There is a great need to talk about it as MAK report was quite a failure .

You have given me a link of the newspaper article , which is not any sort of expert opinion and only a mere comment from people, who do not know anything about flying.

For me, only the experts opinions are important statements about Protasiuku . But also not the conclusions of the report, which is politically conditioned, unfortunately,. The facts contained therein are valuable, but not the conclusions, because they were politically determined . I'm sorry, that I think so, but unfortunately it happens everywhere and not just in Poland .

Any pilot who knowingly descends through minimums is unfit to fly. Any pilot who unknowingly descends through minimums is incompetent and shouldn't be piloting an aircraft. A bit harsh? Not really when you think about the outcome. One person was ultimately responsible for those lives and was legally bound to follow rules which were disregarded. Lack of situational awareness = dead passengers. The controller obviously screwed up too, but the controller wasn't responsible for the safety of the passengers and the aircraft. If you read up on the approach, it was gross negligence on the part of the crew, Russian ATC, BOR, and the Polish Air Force command structure (falsified logs, lack of currency, lack of SOP, horrendous CRM). None of that would have been tolerated in commercial aviation, why was it tolerated in an elite military regiment? Heads should defiantly roll in the PAF for that one.

The YAK captain should be jailed as well. That was a big clue that the problem is systemic and not a one-off fluke.

I'm impressed by your ability to chew the cud for ages. If there's a fatal flaw on either part we will hardly ever know on which one caused it's gonna be obscured by the politicians.

Sympathy is the best what we people can do about it.

And you know what , everybody who says we should stop writting about it , they feel that if they start talking about the crash they would immediatelly be taken as PIS supporters , the mohair berets army , the haunted maniacs . That makes me laugh . It simply assures me that they are cowards and they are affraid to talk about it as it is just a PIS issue and most of normal people don`t want to become a part of that league .

But in fact I am not any party supporter , not rightist or nationalist follower , but a person who does not believe in lies , only because the truth is politically inconvenient in this case .

Every aviation fatality is an opportunity to make flying safer. People should demand that the changes be implemented so that this completely avoidable accident will not be repeated.

warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/17500/news, you simply can't trust politicians or those under them. An international team of experts needs to be assembled. It's as simple as that. Then neither MAK or the Polish side will be able to turn this into a circus.

I would value your comments, if only you were able to relate the facts together .

I said at the begining that it was caused by many mistakes ( about 150 or something ) by many people , but blaming mainly the pilot is a simple not understanding the whole complexity of the crash . Your view is biased and based on politically one sided version , really anty PIS bashing . But tell me , honestly , what PIS has in common with the truth and everyone`s right to knowing the truth . I prefer to read as much as possible to have my unbiased opinion . I believe that too many factors occured and the factors were mutually connected .

Lets keep it semi-civil.
I am telling what I experience here in everyday Polish non-expat life here in Warsaw. This Smolenkist nonsense simply is not an issue here in everyday life.

Perhaps we could discuss the Barbara Blida case in the same way?
P.S. I admire Sobieski because he stopped the Turks in Vienna - something he has in common with Charles Martel (OK here the Arabs) and Don Juan. Too bad he as not able to crush these perfidious magnates. But at least he saved Europe.

Read my member`s profile , I am not hiding my information about myself .

My views are based on my feelings of responsibility as a pilot. I could care less about the petty politics being played out in the shadow of this tragedy. I break the rules, I kill my passengers, I'm responsible. There are almost always contributing factors, but the safety of aircraft stops at the pilot. That is why all aviation authorities that I know of explicitly state that the captain always has the last say when safety comes into question, that includes deviation from ATC instructions. Buck stops at the left seat.

You are 100% right . Why did it happen to become a bargaining card before the election. It is inapropriate what PIS for is doing right now . PIS and PO are mainly to blame for merging the crash with politics.

I agree here as well. I had an impression that there was an undercurrent of cocky fly-boy attitude, most probably from the military side.
The interractions between the cockpit and the tower made me feel very uneasy. At work (in the US), we always have the radio on, listening to the exchanges between the tower and the pilots, so I've heard a lot of them. What I heard from Smolensk, was very different. So I listened many, many times looking for explanation of what I was hearing, but I could not find enough excuses - Poles were obviously and off-handedly dissing the Russians - not very proffecional when you have 100 people on board. For me - unheard of.

That's why the contiued Russian bashing is so worrysome to me, there is so much more to be fixed on Polish side..

Nope, nobody seems to give a damn about a bunch of dead people. Clearing out the dead wood is probably a positive aspect.

pprune.org/rumours-news/415657-polish-presidential-flight-crash-thread-45.html
great thread from pilots perspective..

the pilots seem to agree with convex and seamus :)

I'm pretty sure we've been following it all along. That is the 2nd thread there about that crash, I believe. The first one was closed because the idiot conspiracy theorists started spouting their garbage there.

Yeah, there isn't much conspiracy here as the black boxes were checked by both sides. I heard a theory about created fog but that's quite laughable given what the forecasts said. The problem was that the updated forecasts weren't given out on time. The communication between the Yak crew and the Tupolev one was garbled. Yes, the 200m visibility part was clear but check the transcripts, there was another bit of confusion.

And yet - he made a fatal mistake. His training wasn't up to scratch, and he wasn't qualified at that moment in time to fly the plane.

It's nonsense like that that encourages those with alternative theories to come out. Also, they misreported the time on the day of the accident. There was a lot of fiddling with the apparatus too. The sneakiness of the Russian authorities and downright incompetence hardly allayed any fears.

Sticking with known data, we can draw clear conclusions but people are throwing other red herrings around which sow the seeds of doubt.

Yeah, I'm there too somewhere. :)

------


I must say I'm struggling a little trying to understand your contention here, could you explain what you believe happened? I don't think anyone is blaming "just" the pilot or rather pilots? I certainly am not.

Convex sees this from a pilot's perspective and so do I, sometimes what's clear to me appears very muddy to others and vice versa, often I miss the non-pilots' perspective because I'm so used to thinking in a certain way. In the thread I created shortly after the crash (pilot's perspective) I said that I believe there were multiple errors here, both by the ATC and by the pilots. The main responsibility, as always, rests with the crew and in particular with the captain. The general top-heavy atmosphere at the Polish Airforce (at the time) was very unhealthy and didn't follow some basic CRM concepts, no supervisor should ever pressure a captain into anything, coming into a cockpit before a landing is often viewed as such. In the past I had a higher ranking officer try to enter my cockpit below the sterile cockpit level, I politely implied it was time for him to leave as we were reviewing our landing procedures, when he kept stalling I told him to get the f&@k out of my cockpit; afterwards I was actually complimented by the rest of my crew for taking care of the stress they felt by having a "supervisor" breathe down their necks.

So are you saying this was all a set-up and the crew didn't make any mistakes? Or do you think they all were responsible? Or do you think the crew messed up really badly? Could you explain please?

This is real life. Is it accident, pilot's unintentional error, OR assassination, an intentional error of someones? If people were sure it was accident, there wouldn't have been discussion or discussions would be technological, philosophical, etc.. Probability of assassination is more scary as it means a big group of murderers are among us as this can't be organized by an individual or by a small group like al-qaeda.

Well based on how you described air control towers, I think its time we stop calling them air control towers. They should just be called airport plane taxi services since by your account they do virtually nothing to help planes land and only tell landing planes what strip to land on and coordinate how planes on the ground taxi around.

Anyway, OK legally the pilot has ultimate responsibility, but I think its just wrong to blame him 100% if he's getting faulty information from the air control tower.

Its kind of like driving your car. At the end of the day you are responsible for your driving actions despite what people in the car may tell you. But if you trust somebody in the car with you (as the Polish pilots trusted the Russian tower) and he tells you to drive down a rough street (unbeknown to you) that gets you into an accident, I think it would absolutely be wrong to jump up and down and then say "Its all the driver's fault".

I think the pilot originally thought there would be an ILC airport tracking device that would help him land (like there was when Putin and other top Russians landed there before) and only found out last minute there wasn't one.

I will agree with the criticism of the Polish pilots in that they should have been trained better in landing in adverse conditions, especially in a place like Russia where we keep hearing about Russian planes crashing or Russian pilots barely landing their planes. The Polish pilots should have been trained to understand that when they land in Russia (especially in tough conditions), they are not going to have top technical support. The pilots should have been trained to understand that landing in Russia is not like landing in most countries. If Russian pilots are having problems landing in Russia, how can it be any easier for non-Russian pilots?

I do give credit to the Russian air tower in that they tried to request from Moscow another airport for the plane to land at. But for some reason they got into an argument with Moscow and Moscow for some reason failed to provide another airport for the pilots to land at. I'm sure the pilot thought it was acceptable to land at the airport since after all he wasn't being given an alternate airport to land at.

He's not blamed 100% - but he has the ultimate responsibility.


The driver is still responsible for the safe operation of the car. It's his job to stop if the road isn't suitable, not the passenger.


You can "think" all you want - there is absolutely no evidence that suggests that the pilot thought so. That - again - is just idle speculation. If he expected an ILS, then discovered there wasn't one - don't you think it would be on the cockpit voice recorder? Don't you think he'd ask the Yak guys "hey dudes, where's the ILS gone?". Don't you think the Yak pilots themselves would mention such a thing?

It's pretty obvious that you know nothing about aviation from such comments.

They weren't *allowed* to perform this landing. Training or no training, it won't change the fact that they attempted an approach in which they were required to have over 1km of visibility - and it won't change the fact that they went below 130m without visually spotting the runway.

Landing at this airport in Russia is no different to thousands of airports in the West. There are rules and regulations applied, and the pilot broke them. End of story.


Failed to provide them? What are you talking about? ATC doesn't "give" them an alternative airport - they define it themselves. ATC can, of course, advise them to go somewhere - but again - it's advisory. It's very likely that after PAF 101 missed the approach, they'd be advised to divert to Moscow.

Incidentally, it's not a matter of "thinking it's acceptable" - visibility was down to 200m (by the way, the report shows a nice foggy picture for you - and Blasik already reported that visibility was zero) - which made his landing attempt illegal. As a pilot, he should've known his qualifications - and his qualifications didn't allow him to attempt it.

MediaWatch, I understand you - you're trying to apply common sense to a situation that's highly regulated and specific. But it just doesn't work like that - aviation is full of regulations and rules that simply don't make sense to us mere mortals.

As usual within MINUTES your commenting on my comments on a topic like this. Some things never change. ;)

Anyway, your telling me when landing in Russia a plane has to first make an attempt to land (with the possibility of crashing) before somebody in Russia gives the plane clearance to land at another Russian airport???

Huh?

But there was discussion between the Smolensk air controllers and Moscow for them to land at another airport (at the last minute) but for some reason another Russian airport was not provided for them by Moscow.

In this case they providing guidance, they weren't controlling the aircraft. Ground is responsible for making sure that the taxiways are clear, the tower makes sure runways are clear, and approach is responsible for maintaining separation in the air around an airport.


The information that was advisory, not instructions. It's 100% the pilots job to maintain situational awareness. And it's definitely, absolutely, 100% the pilots job not to bust minimums. Apparently the radar was old and already was showing problems with the YAK and the Il-76 (as per the report).


There is a difference between someone issuing you a command and providing you with advice.


They had planned to fly the NDB approach from the get go.


Seems pretty straightforward to me for an NDB approach.


He knew the weather was below minimums, Vnukovo and Minsk were already offered up en-route. Vitebsk was closed that day (even though it was listed as an alternate before taking off, ridiculous).

Russian ATC and the tower should have taken action once they realized that the Yak pilot didn't really care much about following proper procedure instead of complimenting him for pulling off the landing after breaking the rules. But all sides pushed it, and now everyone is dead.

It was completely avoidable by the aircrew had they just followed their own rules. Relying on advisory information from a beat up radar at a decommissioned airforce base in a foreign language when flying your head of state and top military brass is in terrible weather, to put it quite simply, grossly negligent.

But it's over and done now. Like I posted earlier, first and foremost it's the PAF and BOR that should be held to account for putting the President's life in danger like that. The fingerpointing is inevitable, and there's blame to be doled out to just about everyone involved. The only problem is that it deflects from the fact that it was a completely avoidable accident had the crew just followed their own rules. This is a huge, huge, huge black eye for the PAF, and they should take corrective action ASAP to ensure that they can fulfill their mission of providing safe flights for VIPs.


An approach was requested from the crew, and provided by ATC. The CVR bits in the report are an easy read.

They didn't factor in the inertia aspect of it either. In a panic-stricken maneuver, they increased the thrusters so as to normalise the glidepath. This was after the pressure had been standardised. When you throw in the delayed response of ATC, you have only one result without divine intervention.

The crux of the matter is the working of the relevant radars. If they were fully functional then they had to see the plane's trajectory as being off-course. Delph, you always talk of the 100m thing but they really didn't know. The distortion effect was there and there was a 168m differential. The pilot was not suicidal and would not have gone way way down as he ended up doing. Below the 100m mark, maybe, but look where they ended up and how off to the left they were. Not feasible without distortion, sorry.

Seanus, they should've increased the thrust far earlier. Even if they were using the Radio Altimeter - as I understand it - they should have applied thurst as early as 160m to compensate for the TU-154M dropping 30m (which seems to be a well known/understood 'feature'). The ravine was about 40m deep - so in a worst case scenario, they would've ended up at around 90m above the runway before pulling up. Quite survivable.


They did know. The report makes it clear that General Blasik was reading out the correct (barometric) altitude readings. It's all checked and there in black and white. In fact, when Blasik made the 150m call - they should've either spotted the runway or performed a "go around". Nothing more to it.


Why did he start the approach, then? He was breaking the regulations by even attempting to approach in those conditions. Look at what his minima was for the 2xNDB approach.

What distortion? Blasik clearly reads out the barometric altimeter, and the navigator is clearly reading out the radio altimeter. No distortion there - they knew where they were at all times.

You together with Delphiandomine have to acknowledge the fact , that the Russians have committed just as many unforgivable mistakes, it is difficult for you , as you are both Russians to accept this painful truth. Russians have committed a lot of cardinal errors. Many of these people if it happened in Poland, would be prosecuted for committing a crimes of unintentional air catastrophy crimes and negligence of duties . The Polish criminal prosecutor`s investigation is already underway .

What makes you think that?


Not in this case.


The Polish criminal prosecutor's reach doesn't extend to Russia.

Unforgivable mistakes?

Monia, an unforgivable mistake is what the Commander did on that plane - as the person in supreme authority, his decision to begin the approach (despite not being legally allowed to do so!) was reckless when you consider who was board. I mean, the guy was only carrying around some of the very top people in Poland - why was he even attempting to approach when he was prohibited from doing so, and also in the knowledge that the airport had told him clearly that "conditions for landing : none"?

Then we have the unforgivable mistake of going below the level to which he was cleared to. Can you justify this in any way? You can't.

No-one here is denying that the Russians made mistakes too, but they certainly didn't put that plane below 100m (barometric) without clearance.


Utter lies. You know why? I don't recall any court martials of people in the 36th regiment, especially those responsible for training. Likewise, I don't see any BOR officials being prosecuted despite their inability to check the airport in Smolensk - and for letting the President fly there when it wasn't checked.


Good - we might see prosecutions of all those incompetent people who failed to do their job in Poland.