Polish Presidential Flight Crash Thread

[SadPole]

To Fox3, Alice025, BOAC

Some clarification, it isn't general Blasik who reads the (most likely radio) altitude. It is the navigator (aka shturman in Russian, and it is clearly determined already by the transcript as Russian 'sh''t'. They (MAK) forgot to include that "shturman" thing in the legend which introduced some confusion by various translations to English. A few altitude readouts not identified as being done by the navigator are, for example, at 10:39:59 and the one at 10:40:42 and marked as "A" which the legend identifies as "undetermined speaker". As some of the "A"s have been identified by now as being Blasik, some people jumped to conclusion that all "A"s are Blasik, which may or may not be true. The transcript that has been released is the oldest one, and since then they flew in a lot of people who knew everyone in the cockpit to positively identify all "A"s.

Anyway, majority of the wrong altitude readouts are clearly done by the navigator, and at this point the question of "what was this guy doing/thinking" seems to be the key to the whole thing. The lesser issue is which of his readouts were done over the radio and thus heard by the ATC, thus possibly being the reason for invalid "on path" ATC confirmations. .

Which leads to the Russian ATCs "kvitancye" issues and what they mean. I think Alice025 description is pretty clear. Maybe it is a cultural issue, but I can read it and understand very well why they would do it that way.

• The procedure is pretty clear, a computer communication protocol like. Say the essential info that you have, and the ATC tells you the essential info he has. You need it twice as often, you say your bit twice as often. The initiator says his bit and does not get an answer, he repeats it, does not get it then, he falls back/resets into safe position (say go-around) etc. This is exactly how most computer protocols work and do error corrections. Dedicating communication channel to continuous one-way transmissions (string of info not requiring acknowledge) under negotiated circumstances has some advantages but also some disadvantages, main of them being the need to negotiate the switch from two-way to one-way communications and parameters of it.
• It can work with even the simplest, oldest, and improvised equipment. Russians always liked to do it that way, for reasons that should be clear from their history. Imagine you have to set up make-shift airport on some meadow or frozen lake.
• The protocol used can be exactly the same if the ATC has approach altitude readings independent from the plane reports and when he does not. If he has independent altitude confirmation and it is way off, he can tell the guy something like: "goaround and figure out why your altitude readings are this much off" – which SHOULD have happened here IF the ATC had any plane-independent altitude readouts and IF the crew followed the protocol.
• If ATC equipment allows it, switch to frequent PAR-like approach can be made by the pilot simply making more frequent requests/reports, thus requiring more frequent and thus more precise replies, which could be advantageous in sudden emergency situations.