Polish President Lech Kaczynski and gov officials die in a plane crash in Russia

No matter what any orders said...the pilot is responsible for the safety of the aircraft , and he alone makes the decisions affecting safety...

It does not matter who is telling you to land...if the pilot decides its unsafe , which in this case it clearly was , then his duty is to abort the landing and land elsewhere....

Yes but the problem is that this particular pilot had seen firsthand exactly what happens to a captain (in this case his former captain) who does carry out his duty to land only when/where it is safe to do so.

The pilot who refused the presidents orders to land in a dangerous place on a previous flight was actually given an award by the air force for doing his duty under duress...

The president wanted to have him charged...

I am sure this pressure the pilot was under was a factor in his decision to take the risk....but he should have resisted this pressure...

The pilot had the chance to take a risk and please his boss who was on board the aircraft , or screw up an important meeting for his country by playing it safe...

Not an easy position to be in , and its understandable he took the risk..

He should never have been put in this position , if the flight had taken off earlier they could have diverted and still made the meeting... The pilot was not the only one to screw up on this mission...his was only the last mistake in a series of errors...

You're relying on the words of the lawyer that represents only a few of the families - the same families who are part of the Kaczynski-clique of dragging up Smolensk for political purposes constantly. His view is biased as hell - he's nothing but a puppet of Jarek (or more accurately, the ones controlling Jarek).

It's also one man's observation - most people seem to accept that Tusk is furious about the technical aspects of the report, rather than what the report actually says. We don't know this for certain, but bear in mind that all reports about Poland's response is based on the words of the Prime Minister, nothing else.


And I wonder if Poland is going to have the guts to admit that there are serious problems within the Air Force?

They definatly need to look at the way things are done in the air force...

The crash report into the accident that involved the Polish air force Casa transport aircraft concluded that the crash was caused by the crew trying to land in bad weather at an airfield that did not have good facilities for bad weather landings...

Whilst looking out of the windows , trying to spot the runway they lost height , and flew into the ground..!

Does this sound familiar...???

Dreadfully familiar - I really wonder if they're going to bring this up in the Polish version of the report.

Worst case scenario is that the pilot gets all the blame and no blame is put towards the Polish administration side of things.

Sadly , the pilot has the last word when it comes to the question of safety , and no matter what pressures he is under he is supposed to make the right decision....

Hopefully all the other people who contributed to this disaster will be named and shamed also , and the lessons will be learned...

Many mistakes were made...the pilot just made the last one...

All VIP pilots are. If you want to assign blame for undue pressure, it should be towards the AF.

Hey, MediaWatch, I suggest you read this.

naszdziennik.pl/index.php?dat=20110105&typ=po&id=po01.txt

Do you trust the integrity of this article?

Hmmmm.... well there was a lot of stuff that's been said in there. LOL

Its hard to say, but I guess the article is OK

Its generally somebody's account of what they saw when the plane was landing which we all know. Plane while landing starts to hit trees and the rest is history.

What I thought was interesting was the speculation at the end of it where they thought maybe the efforts of the plane crew would have in fact been in vain if the internal system of the plane was compromised.

Also they noted how for some reason the person on the ground observing the plane could clearly see it even though there was prevailing fog. hmmmmm

By the way, I can't believe nobody on this forum has made any comments on what Tusk has said lately.

He hasn't said anything noteworthy really - apart from making it clear that Poland isn't too impressed with the Russian handling of things, which isn't news - because Kilch already said something more-or-less to that effect a while ago. But really, most of us are fed up of speculating and just want to read the final report.

About the only interesting thing that Tusk said was that some of the conclusions made by MAK were "without foundation" - it would be interesting to know just what these conclusions were. It could very well be that Russia has pointed a big finger at the Polish Air Force, who have (instead of sorting themselves out) decided to cry to Tusk instead.

I just cannot figure out what the hell the relevant authorities were doing in allowing this flight to Smolensk in the first place.

In a sense, you're right MediaWatch - the pilot isn't to blame, but rather the mentality within the Polish Air Force.

Untill we know whats in this crash report , we can,t say if Tusk is right , or just being Polish...

Oh **** off ! He is only politician and that kind have their own ways regardless of nationality!

What i meant was , its kind of a Polish tradition to distrust the Russians , so Tusk is maybe just following that tradition , rather than actually finding anything wrong in the report...

He is rather covering his own ass if anything !

Well , that , as you say is normal for politicians of any nation...

What????

Wait a minute. Guys like you have criticized Kaczynski's people when ever they criticized the investigation against the Russians. Now you have Tusk, who does NOT belong to Kaczynski's political party (was a rival to Kaczynski) who is critical of the Russian version of events and now you just dismiss it as a "Polish tradition of distrusting Russians"???

Why all this defense of Russia? God forbid there is evidence that the Russians are human and made mistakes in this investigation or made mistakes at the Russian airtower and that some Poles merely observe and mention it.

I am not defending the Russians at all , if there is any evidence that they had a hand in causing this crash , then i will condem them as loud as anyone else , but there just isn,t , well none thats been revealed yet...???

As for Poles having a distrust of Russians , do you think its not true...??

Do you know of any nation on this planet that was not at war with somebody having some of its people accuse another country of deliberatly assasinating the passengers of a crashed airliner....???? I don,t...

See the new thread on the crash report.............

Smoleńsk: Officials pressured pilots.
.

Merged thread:
Kaczynski killed by Russia, what do you think?

I guess i'm one of the few people that firmly believe russia is covering something up. I never trusted Russia, or Germany. If any fellow polish people out there i'd like to hear your thoughts. I'm in the states now and Americans generally don't care or talk about Poland, though many believe Russia shot down Kaczynski's plane

Osama killed by Obama, Kaczynski by Putin. . . .
What has this world come to?

I am really scared....


Yes, it is quite possible. They will be sure when Hollywood makes a film about it.

When i move to Russia , i will ask Mr Putin about this....

you should read more Rafał Ziemkiewicz (available on Rzeczpospolita daily website - rp.pl or his column on interia.pl
[fakty.interia.pl/felietony/ziemkiewicz]) - there is some covering up on the Russian side and so there is also on the side of the Polish goverment (Ziemkiewicz lists some of the major lies in one of his articles) but there is very little (if anything) to support the notion that the plane was somehow downed

I also, think Russia had a hand in this killing of Polish leaders. But the media won't let us know the truth for many years.

Mike

Hasn't this been flogged to death somewhere else on the forum?

Many? I doubt it. It's a ridiculous conspiracy theory. And don't forget rule number one - "All conspiracy theories turn out to be nonsense"

The media?

What does the media have to do it with it?

If you actually KNEW anything about Poland, you'd know that there are very vocal opposition media here - none of whom would have any qualms about publishing any real evidence about this plane crash.

But go on - tell us, how do you think Russia was involved?

Yeah...we went round and round in circles....but in the end most of us came to the conclusion that the crash was caused by a series of errors.... all of them Polish sadly....

sorry where did you get that rule from? one of Euclidean mathematics axioms? the consequence of general theory of relativity?


not that obvious - their is a serious version the plane did not work properly (and Russian ground flight control in Smolensk also made a couple of mistakes) - this is not to cast suspicion on Rusians - most probably the alleged malfunction of the plane (in a critical moment) was no consequence of any deliberate human action

I thought the evidence proved the aircraft was working perfectly well up to the moment of impact....

not for certain - there is some serious suspicion something was wrong with an important flight automatic procedure - there were plenty of made-up alleged 'facts' in the media who were never friendly (to say the least) to Kaczyńskis (mostly Gazeta Wyborcza) (not to mention blatant lies by some members of the current government regarding the investigation that have been revealed)- quite recently there were tests performed to check how the twin plane of the crashed Tu-154M would behave in similar conditions - their outcome was partly revealed to the public