I dont know which one of you took care of last night's interruptions by S of D, but thank you so so much. I was hoping I would wake up this morning to find it all was a bad dream. Perhaps it was!
Good Lord, this thread has turned into the National Enquirer. Enough with the conspiracy theories and wild unfounded conjectures already. Find a forum on the net more suited to this type of garbage, plenty of them out there. This isn't the place. Newbies.....take a hint. A big hint. Buy some Imodium and give it a rest.
"The president came to the cockpit and asked, gentlemen, who is the head of the armed forces?" I answered, You, Mr President. So, please fulfil my order and fly to Tbilisi - the President said, and walked out without waiting for any explanation. "
This excerpt from the account Cpt. Pietruczuk Gregory, who on 12 August 2008 commanded the crew of the presidential plane which was flying to Azerbaijan. Quotation comes from the file of the investigation, which was ran in autumn 2008 by the military prosecutor's office, checking whether Pietruczuk committed a crime, because he did not follow orders of President Lech Kaczynski.
Witness and participant in the conflict of his commander with the president was Cpt. Arkadiusz Protasiuk - the second pilot.
After almost 20 months, 10 April 2010, he commanded the Tupolev, which, with the president and 95 people on board crashed at the airport in Smolensk. In both flights Mjr. Robert Grzywna also took part as the navigator.
Ptkay, The source you linked is from "Gazeta Wyborcza", a major Polish newspaper that has always been very hostile to President Kaczynski and his political formation. 40 min. ago in the main Polish TV news, a couple of witnesses who were onboard of that flight to Tbilisi in 2008 denied the "revelations" of the newspaper you quoted. One of them was Kaczynski's assisstant who was with him all the time during that travel, the other one - a well-known Polish publicist who flew with them to Georgia. They both confirmed there indeed was a disagreement between Kaczynski and the pilot but on the ground in Ukraine during a waystop where they were taking onboard the President of Ukraine. Nothing like the President walking into cockpit inflight happended. They stated that after this disagreement it was clear to all that the flight was bound to Dagestan the moment it took off from Ukraine. They said the PIC at some point indeed was ordered to divert to Tbilisi but it was an order received by fax given by Polish Minister of Defence. The PIC decided not to carry out this order for safety reasons.
My conclusions:
- as it was stated a number of times in this thread, one should take media reports with a grain of salt, especially if "news" come from media engaged in political struggle
- so far, both Polish and Russian official sources have said there is no evidence of any influence/pressure on the pilots prior to the crash
- even if the 2008 incident had looked exactly as presented by "Wyborcza" newspaper, in my personal opinion, the experienced military pilots from an elite air regiment can hardly be considered so mentally fragile that they could (if needed) breach any procedures fearing that "the president would be angry". Especially if in 2008 the pilot did not face any career-wise consequences for his decision (some say he was even awarded a medal). Poland is not a banana republic.
- grief period in Poland is over. Political war is erupting again, especially as it enters a very short unplanned presidential election campaign. Today's large publication in "Wyborcza" may just be a bullet in this political war with arguable relevance to the 2010 TU154 crash but being a fuel for political discussions.
Nope. So far there were only rumors and even yesterday, the official information was that maybe, maybe the crash was some 10 minutes earlier than 10:56. This time it's not a rumor. It comes from the local Smolensk energy company and their control systems. Source: Sergiei Amelin.
few pages back there was fierce discussion about the fact, that they descended bellow the minima in order to land. I saw this kind of "approach" several times by crew of L-410 (Turbolet) when LVP were in force with 150 m RVR..but they contiued approach with very low speed and HOPING they will end up over the runway. They were lucky. I was stupid to allow them to proceede. After Smolensk I will not allow anyone to perform approach when it is obvious that they are neither equipped nor trained for CAT III approaches (type of aircraft is strong indicator of that).
The Polish delegation lead by the Minister of national defence of Poland Bogdan Klihom on Saturday visited Moscow Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) and took note of the preliminary data investigation into the crash of the President plane in Smolensk.
"The Polish delegation was informed of the preliminary results of the investigation by the technical Commission of the IAC. Answers provided satisfied the Polish side, as was stated to Interfax by IAC.
"The Minister was given the opportunity to listen to in full to record of voice emergency recorder and familiarize yourself with the preliminary results of joint processing of parametric and voice recorders," stated in the Committee. IAC also said that the Committee head Tatyana Anodina asked head of the military Department of Poland for "data on the preparation of the crew and aircraft to flight, noting that the Russian side has scrupulously provides technical Commission all necessary materials for investigation".
HubertH, sorry to disappoint you, but nothing "confirmed by Polish offcials" in yesterday's article you are quoting. Just some press rumors, like many, many others, this time even without any precise final conclusion. As for now, the 10:56 time, even if wrong, still offcially remains. There were many other, earlier rumors about the time of the crash, but again, only rumors. Sergei's information is precise and based on hard facts. Quite a difference here.
Didn't Russians confirm that the power outage occured at 1039? And the Polish journalist who filmed the aftermath confirmed he did it at 1047, a few minutes after the event.
Are you sure it's official? I don't think anything can be called official right now. It was simply reported by media as having happened at 1056, and so far stayed that way. But now reports are coming up it might have actually happened earlier.
ten minutes earlier... doesn't it indicate the tower was not up to their task? 10 min is a long time to discover the approaching plane has crashed practically 'under your nose', isn't it?
The crash was at 10:40. The alarm was sounded at 10:56. According to the Polish journalist, who was a witness of the crash from the window of the nearby hotel, he was at the crash site around 10:47 and you can see the first firemens arrive some 2 minutes later on his film.
Now, a question comes to my mind. Temp. around 0-1 Celsius. Heavy fog. Cold plane. Icing??
Why do you assume first alarm was sounded at 1056? And if so, why first firemen a few minutes earlier. Also, if you read reports from similar accidents, it's not unusal for alarm to be started 5-6 minutes after the crash.
criss; Thank you for publishing an approach chart of Smolensk North. Too bad I can't read russian. Could you tell us whether the Minimum Descent Height is specified on this chart and what it is ? DJ.
