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Old 25th May 2010, 14:41
  #100 (permalink)  
chuks
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
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Points taken but...

The title of this is, after all, Rumours & News, not Unfounded Speculation!

I think a certain amount of reserve when discussing a tragedy is no bad thing, basically. Not to spoil anyone's fun but the very time when we feel most compelled to speculate about the cause of a crash is also exactly when we know the least about it!

This one is going to be one very hot potato given the past history between Russia and Poland, not least the very event the deceased Polish head of state was going to commemorate, the Katyn Massacre. Then we will have a layer of murk from the Russian/Polish/English languages and the Russian/Polish/Western ways of both operating aircraft and (perhaps) investigating accidents.

I suppose that having Vladimir Putin head up the investigation is to show on the part of Russia how seriously this is being taken, when to many of us, he is simply a sinister former KGB man. Right there you see a very basic conflict looking at the same thing.

I think we all understand that humans are imperfect in whatever we try to accomplish, otherwise there would be no accidents to discuss here! It is just that air of "Well, I know exactly what went wrong there! It was..." followed often by some unfounded speculation rather than a rumour, let alone news might be best avoided.

I am here reading this thing and also commenting, after all, so that it is not as if I am saying it's totally a bad thing that has no place in aviation. It is just that I think one needs to keep a certain sense of proportion when discussing a very real, human tragedy.

Just to show you what I mean, we were once inbound to a small airstrip out in the hills of Western Virginia, when we overflew the site of a very recent, fatal CFIT. The guy I was with went onto Unicom to give his opinion of just how our fellow aviator had got it so badly wrong, blah-blah-blah. 2 minutes later, just after landing, someone walked over to thank him for that but to point out that the crash pilot's widow had been listening in on the loudspeaker in the line shack. Oops...
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