Polish Presidential Flight Crash Thread

[SadPole]

Lots of new info

An article on the subject in today's Gazeta Wyborcza. Interview with a pilot who USED to fly dignitaries in the same Polish Airforce unit. He now trains civilian pilots. It’s very long and detailed, as he knows to the letter both Tu-154 and Russian ATC procedures. Some most important points he made:

• The approach at Smolensk like many here suggested was NOT a PAR approach. He says it is clear from the start. All what Smolensk North apparently had was ASR and this is why it is so damn important when the ATC screamed that they were not reading the altitude (Oni nye kvitovali!!!). On ASR approach the ATC only knows altitude of the plane from what the plane crew tells him. When they read radar altimeter values that did indeed mean to him that they were on the right path as they were supposed to give him barometric altitude values.

• They never had permission to land. All that they were given was conditional permission to descend to the decision height at which point they were supposed to request permission to begin landing procedure. They never did that, never followed proper procedures. The ATC had no clue they were landing no clue where they were because they were never supposed to use radar altimeter readings for landing.

• The crew was absolutely never trained for what they were doing. For political reasons, the polish government canceled Tu-154 simulator training – because they had to do it in Moscow and did not want to buy a simulator of their own. The way they were doing their emergency procedures training was pretend playing on the plane parked at tarmac. This is one of the reasons why pretty much all competent pilots have quit that military outfit. And, of course, the fact that civilian airlines pay several times higher salaries did not help the matter either. The only good thing about the story is that the IDIOT who made the decision to not train on Tu-154 simulators was the one of those killed on that flight.

• He asserted that the Tu-154 instruction specifically prohibits landing on autopilot even on ILS approach. They are supposed to disengage the autopilot between 100 to 60 meters above landing strip. I found the Tu-154 instruction on the internet and that is indeed what it says. Whether one agrees or disagrees whether it should be like that, the instruction like that HAS TO BE FOLLOWED because it probably means that it can become impossible to safely disengage the autopilot under some conditions after that threshold is passed.

• The other political decision was made by the dead president himself to change the flight plan twice. The original flight plan called for departure at 6:30 Warsaw time. But the president requested the time to be changed to 7:00 and then was half an hour late for that, and so they left at 7:30, which would make it impossible to make it to the ceremony if the plane landed anywhere but Smolensk north.

Meaning, we have incompetent, not too confident pilots being micromanaged by egomaniacal politicians. If the pilots believed in their abilities there is no way they would stay at that job under those conditions.