RegDep

As rumoring is accepted, I'd offer that the "5 crew" may also mean

1. that there was a unfortunate typo on the web site

2. that the website editor counted Blasik as Air Force and thus erroneously as crew ("one of us"), as the website is for the 36. Specjalnego Pułku Lotnictwa Transportowego „Obrońców Warszawy", the unit of 101.

3. that Blasik had booked himself as one of the crew to "fly hours" to keep his license. The crew discusses something in the 1st version of the CVR transcript around and after 10:03 about a "four-star general" (Blasik's NATO rank?), which may hint to that direction.

Alternative 3 per se may not mean that he overtook command of the flight.

vovachan

Not really - "landing -additional" means landing clearance was still pending.

dvv

kotofeus, it's not funny even before you know that some of those soldiers later stole several bank cards from the scene of the accident.

gstaniak

That's attaching much more importance to the knowledge taken away from this crash than it can possibly have. There's nothing new there. We didn't have to learn the hard way, the world did it a long time ago, and the PLF 101 crew simply proved PAF hasn't learnt from other people's mistakes. That's the saddest part of this accident: all those people would still be alive today if PAF applied common knowledge: flying by-the-book, CRM training etc. There's nothing to be learnt from this accident that's not already in handbooks and manuals. All that remains to be done is to identify the people responsible for neglecting this knowledge and tolerating sub-standard behaviour, for years. Shame, shame, shame.

kotofeus

funny or not, but it is all about Russian army...

kotofeus

I'm talking about a second IL-76 approach. The way the officer in charge talks to IL-76 crew and to the ATC is completely different to the way he talks to the TU154M crew.

here is the part where, in my opinion, the officer in charge gives an order to IL-76 crew to go around and then proceed to their alternative:

09:37:39 Officer in charge: Landing-additional, 8-17
09:37:41 IL-76: Got it, additional…
09:37:45 Office in charge: Be ready for go-around, 120, 2 meters
09:37:50 [FONT='Verdana','sans-serif']WHR[/FONT]: 5, on course, on glidepath
09:38:02 WHR: 4, on course, on glidepath
09:38:17 WHR: 3, on course, on glidepath

*****
09:38:47 WHR: 1, on course, on glidepath
09:38:47 Krasn.: Calm down
09:39:02 Officer in charge: Send him away
09:39:07 Officer in charge: Execute go-around
09:39:13 Krasn.: come on, calm down you.
09:39:19 Officer in charge: CP, CP (Dispatch)
09:39:26 Dispatch: go ahead
09:39:34 Officer in charge: have you coordinate a go around to two… 3,900 to “White”?
09:39:34 ATC: well, the polish plane has landed
09:39:42 Officer in charge: 8-17, course to “White”, climb to 3,900 meters
09:39:49 IL-76: to “White”, 3,900, 8-17
****
09:40:03 Krasn.: Don’t know, not ready yet, we didn’t have it in the forecast and within 20 minutes it covered us. We’re sending Frolov’s (IL-76) crew now to their alternative Tver.

ARRAKIS

You can also hear at the begining the controller clear out the question of the approach for the Il, giving him RSP+OSP.
Interesting also to note during the Il-76 second approach the time between the 130 m call from the tower to the GA from the tower, some 27 seconds. Assuming a descent rate around 3 m/s, it would mean they were at some 50 m.

General impression regarding ATC transcripts. No sign of any pressure from above (Moscow). They were nervous because of the situation, weather, lack of some information, but concentrated on solving the problems. Doing their job.

criss

Ptkay, why referring to me?

Arrakis - after each communication of ATC ti Il76, there is unintelligible transmission from Il, might be altitude readback.

Bandures

If TU154M managed to survive, it have to be the same for them. If you read entire ATC recording, you'll find out that ATC spent a lot of time trying to find what's the alternative for the TU154M, and they don't even thought about landing in such conditions.

And it's certainly different in the way:
1. IL-76 pilot can understand ATC freely, even in "full speed" russian.
2. ATC knows that he has command over aircraft. If IL-76 goes against ATC will, like Yak-40 did, pilot can be questioned by superior. And it's not the case for Poles pilots. They discuss it at 9:23:42, 9:40:19, 10:00:15 and 10:37:42
3. IL-76 give "tickets" feedback. No feedback was from Yak-40, ATC even complain about that at 9:16:58, then they discuss that Yak-40 pilot doesn't understand them.

ARRAKIS

I wasn't the one asking about the lack of?? altitude readback.

One more thing. It looks like all 3 landings/attempts of landing were not exactly by the book (minima).

Approach controler had some problems. At some moment he gives to Il-76 crew for the second time 3 km distance. Plusnin corrects him - 2 km.

RegDep

Arrakis

It was me.

criss

I agree with you on the first attempt. See my whole post #1163.

Alice025

It seems to me as well that all the three planes busted the minima on that day.

The ground control at some point was always finding a plane not where they thought it should be - in all the four approach cases.

One plane they saw on runway the next thing (Yak), to their surprise; twice they had IL too low over their head and over the runway which means it executed go-around later than the 100 metres, and the fourth time, what to say.

Yak crew did say they saw the runway from 50 metres, didn't they?
For them it proved to be enough only because small Yak needs half the run-way length, compared to the other two big planes.

What caught my attention in the transcript is one part that looks like an improvised English lesson, controllers talking to each other, when the major mess has been lived through, before TU appearance. Or what they thought as "over".

Like,
- go-around?
- It's go around.
- Go round?
- No, go around.
- Call around?
- No, go, go around.
- Go around?
- Yes, repeat, go around.

ARRAKIS

Kulverstukas,
do you remember a story quoted on the Smolensk forum about an Iranian Tupolev crew doing an unorthodox GA? They ended up with trees in the wings.
The way they were doing it, instead of a few meters of altitude loss, they had some 30-40 m. Do you remember exactly what they have done?

geirha75

The Russian radar RSP-6M2 in use at the Smolensk airdrome during the tragedy. Is it is a radar which displays altitude as well? Or is it basically an advanced old fashion primary radar? Can RSP-6M2 cope with an modern civilan airplane`s transponder? A transponder which transmits information on altitude and and identification?

Geir

Kulverstukas

ARRAKIS yes, I found it, in Aml post. But it not about GOAROUND button, it's about go-around by DESCENT-CLIMB wheel.

RegDep

Geir, se sidorna 53 och 107 - 111 i den engelska rapporten.
http://www.mak.ru/russian/investigat...report_eng.pdf

Reg

SadPole

Kaczynski very likely in the cockpit with Blasik in the last moments, because someone new comes and they all greet him formally, the crew probing him to make the decision (we can't see anything, we can't see anything) but he does not do anything. Please note that the whole problem with both Kaczynskis has always been that they are people ignorant of pretty much everything but who would always see enemies and conspiracy whenever things would not go their way.

Let the President decide what to do

My comment:

Once again it is clear moron Kaczynski killed all these people. And the argument about the ATCs is now more less : the ATCs should have stopped the crew from trying to land because the crew was unable to refuse Kaczynski's idiocies. How much more STUPID can it get.

Too bad Russians screwed up the scene and did not determine right away where Kaczynski was for sure during crash. It would have saved everyone a lot of grief.

ARRAKIS

I have my little idea on the pressure question during that flight, but so far there are no tangible proofs of it, just (over)interpretations, also in MAKs report. It was a HEAD flight and the questions asked you are quoting are quite normal, as changing the place of landing means a lot of logistic, diplomatic and security problems. Preparations/changes in those areas are outside the scope of the crew duties, nevertheless they have to be done and coordinated.
Maybe the phone call between the president and his brother during the flight could give some answers, but those answers are probably in the hands of FBI/NSA/FSB, etc...
We know the president wasn't in the cockpit.

Could you please spare us that political BS.

Thank you, that was exactly what I was looking for.

Arrakis

NigelOnDraft

It is my (limited) understanding that the TAWS warnings are irrelevant. Whatever the weather, if they were to land there, it would have gone off since the AF was not in the database. Their slight deviations from CL or GS were not relevant to that.

The TAWS system had a means of being coping with such airfields, and a system of coping with QFE... however, it could not cope with both (as here).

One could guess the crew belatedly became aware of that, hence the altering of one altimeter late on to maybe convince the TAWS they were doing a QNH approach (the frig we do for QFE Ops).

NoD

SadPole

How do we know that? As far as I could tell, this was one of the leading theories from the beginning, but then it was hashed up and all that BS with Kaczynski doing the "our brothers the Russians" took over so it was un-PC to pursue it further with Kaczynski being laid to rest at Wawel and such. For all we know, there could have been some political deal made so that everyone is happy, but then Kaczynski lost the election and the deal no longer suited him so he did 180 on that one. If Russians made such a deal, I do hope they now blow it wide open. On the other hand, I can see how the current mess in Poland can suit them quite well. Long term, however, it is bad news for both Poles and Russians.

What is the evidence on where Kaczynski's body was found?

I hope that by that you don’t mean the article quotes with the newly deciphered sentences being said in the cockpit, just my comments to it.

Here is why I said it. I have a big problem with the unrealistic "crew pressing the GoAround button for 7-15[s] and then doing nothing else" being pursued here being PC, while the very realistic theory of crew being completely stripped of their decision making powers somehow being "political".

Are you a politician or something? You think throwing the crew under the bus and letting the likely real culprits off the hook is such a cool idea?

Let's see how that button theory looks again, shall we?

Duh, duh, duh. I am a pressing the button.
1 potato
2 potato
Duh, duh, duh. Nothing happened but I am not gonna say anything.
3 potato PULL-UP
4 potato PULL-UP
Dud, duh, duh. Usually when I press that there button them there thingamabobs move up to "takoff", but duh, duh, duh, now they didn't.
5 potato PULL-UP
6 potato PULL-UP
Duh, duh, duh. Nothing happened but I am not gonna say anything.
7 potato PULL-UP
8 potato PULL-UP
Tam ti tam. Maybe I ought to press that there button again.
9 potato PULL-UP
10 potato PULL-UP
Duh, duh, duh. Pressin da button AGAIN. But not saying anything.
11 potato PULL-UP
12 potato PULL-UP
Tam ti tam. Maybe I ought to move them there thingamabobs up. Not saying anything though.
13 potato PULL-UP
14 potato PULL-UP

Even if you cut the prospective button confusion time down to say 6 seconds, it looks pretty unrealistic and still not the MAIN CAUSE of the crash.

Now contrast it with pretty clearly PROVEN theory that someone other than the crew decided to make the call on goaround. The crew tells him – we cannot see anything, but he does not even know what that means, and they are too intimidated to tell him.

Now, there used to be a pilot flying VIPs who was not so intimidated. But Kaczynski got rid of him after he told him no way he was going to fly the Tu-154 into a war zone without clearance from the Russians. I carefully checked all what was said about Protasiuk, and the first thing that everyone said about him was "He was such a NICE guy". Do you really like the idea of a NICE guy in such a predicament?