After reading
the interview (you should all do it) with that "old fox" from polish 36th Special Air Transport Regiment, i am about to rethink my view on things: I mean, everyone is trying to make a point as to what approach procedure was carried out here, drawing conclusions from the CVR. But do draw a legitimate conclusion, you would have to positivly assume that the crew actually managed things according to procedure. I more and more dought that, thinking that they just lost their way some time during flight, due to the circumstances descriped in that interview.
What struck me:
What surprised you most in the Smolensk disaster?
Col. Stephen Gruszczyk: That no one is talking about how badly this flight of the presidential machine was actually organized. A flight crew must know before take-off what to do if conditions do not allow landing. The crew and the delegation didnt even know what to do in case of no possible landing until they learned about fog in smolensk during flight. This of course causes a lot of stress, your high rank passangers get angry due to the sudden change of plan and that again puts pressure and stress on the crew. Thats why such things are done before-hand.
How do you evaluate this particular crew of the Tu-154?
They had an incredibly small amount of hours, there is nothing to dwell on it. But above all, the teamwork of the crew was really bad.
It just can't be, that the weather is bad and no earlier than in the air, they decide who is doing what. In aviation it should be the opposite: Everything is already provided for in the procedures before the start.
Another thing: Poor knowledge of the russian language. It is clear, that for the whole crew it means stress, when you don't understand something that the ATC tells you or are not sure of it. On board of a Tupolew its always the navigator who is doing communications with ATC from start to landing. But here, the navigator did the comms in english just until Smolensk ATC and then he switched with the PIC who then communicated with Smolensk tower. This was a fundamental violation of procedure, because in the Tupolew the PIC has to deal only with piloting: he can not be responsible for everything that needs to done on the plane.
One more thing: The transcript clearly shows that the crew had no permission to land. Of course, they probably thought the other way: Because they didnt know what the russian words "Pasadku dapalnitielno" mean. It doesnt mean "landing additional". It means "conditional landing", will say: "Come around, but you get permission to land later". In this particular approach the permission would be received when reaching the decision height.
In Russia, many other things are different: Height is given in meters, not feet, the distance in kilometers, not miles, wind power in meters per second, and not in ITD, etc. The instruments are calibrated according to Western procedures and the crew has to convert everything in their head. This summs up to the difficulty and stress.
Why did the TU-154M crash?
In my opinion, the crew began to look for the ground while descending below the decision height. Normally the principle is the following: If at 100 meters I do not see the ground, i fly away. End of story. Have a look: Here is the flight manual of Tu-154 aircraft. It is written here, that at an airport with only two NDB beacons the minimum requirement is a vertical visibility of 120 m and 1800 m horizontally.
I suspect, that this badly attuned crew began watching for ground and stopped looking at the instruments. And by doing that, they probably lost too much speed, and consequently altitude. In such a situation the procedure should normally be this: The PIC is piloting the plane and watching out for ground, while the second Pilot only observes the instruments, giving the height and distance from the RWY. And what do we see here? The only one reading out instruments is the navigator who should actually just deal with communications! And even the general, who wasn't even supposed to sit in there is reading out some instrument! And what about distance from RWY? No one ever called that even once!
Well, and - like everyone assumes by now - this navigator is somehow gravitated towards the radar-altimeter instead of the bario-altimeter. I can't exclude, that for this unexperienced navigator, reading the radar-altimeter somehow just seemed more convenient for him to do.
The Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) said in their preliminary report that the crew had been put together in the last minute and this might have had an affect on the disaster.
Well this is not surprising, since there was only one and a half crew at disposition. The rest of the flight personal decided to do a much better paid
duty in civil aviation!
One more thing: During my service, the regiment flew to Moscow once a year to train on the simulator. This training has been abandoned by the same defense minister who died in the crash. You know what they were doing instead of simulator training? They are training emergency situations "dry". While standing on the airfield! Thats how you are supposed to train engine cut-off in some phase of the flight???