Hey. I'm new here and thanks for this brilliant analysis of this event. I'm Polish, but I have absolutly no conspiration theories and I hope everyone else, Polish or not, keeps them out of this objective and level-headed analysis. The facts are for me pretty clear, the crew were put under pressure but still made serious errors. I'm however not a pilot, just an interested normal person. (with maybe a bit of above-average knowledge for a non-pilot)
One point I noticed and you seemed not to is that the the crew seemed to know about this depression in the terrain before the runway...at 10:30:50 in the transcript the 2IC said: "the worst thing there is that there is a hole, there are clouds and fog came up"
(I cannot think of any other thing he would describe as a "hole")
I also think both pilots sounded a bit "fed up" before the approach, certainly due to "meddling" by the brass aboard.
i'll try to isolate all passages which could give us clues about the situation the crew found itself in.
at 10:17, they talked to (probably, due to her female name) a flight attendant, telling her "fog came up, unknown if we can land"
At 10:19 they decided to "get close and have a look"
at 10:23, someone important (he got adressed as "commander"- probably chief of polish air force?) came into the cockpit and asked something about the landing but the most important part is untelliglible :/
at 10:25 they communicated with the jak 40 - crew, they told them in no uncertain terms about the bad weather ("its a **** down here" - let's translate this with "its ******* bad down here").
they answered that they will try a approach, but if the weather isn't there they will go for another round.
jak 40 answered that they got in at the last possible moment, then told: "to be honest: you can try... at the most. there are two APMs, they made a "gate", so you can try... but if you don't succeed the second time, you should go to moscow or somewhere else"
at 10:26 the captain told a "director" that "in this conditions we cant land. we'll try once, but there will probably come nothing out of it"
director answered "now we have a problem"
at 10:29 they spoke with the jak again, asking whether the "russians" (the il-76) landed. answer: "no, il went away 2 times (probably meaning 2missed approaches?) and then flew away somewhere") 2IC to captain "you heard it?" captain: "beautiful"
at 10:30 the "director" said: "until now there is no decision by the president what to do"
afterwards, the discussion about the "hole" -2IC "the worst thing there is that there is a hole, there are clouds and fog came up"
at 10:39, 2 minutes before the crash, there is still "general blasik" in the cockpit, seemingly reading a "card" but for me it sounds a bit as if he was reading a manual, trying to figure out what the real crew is doing right now. but this is a bit of speculation, he might also be reading a checklist or something. but this is something a ******* 4-man-cockpit crew (!) should be very well able to do without him i would think.
I've omitted every "technical" part, you guys probably know about those way better than me. For me you've described the critical errors during the approach very well and I'm very happy with such a explanation, I'll hope my translations help a bit to explain why the pilots tried this reckless maneuvre.
I'll take a back seat now and let you continue with your discussion - if you however need a translation just tell me.