PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Polish Presidential Flight Crash Thread
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Old 21st Jan 2011, 07:40
  #1213 (permalink)  
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Alice025, I understand what you are trying to say, but International (civil) ATC procedures and Low visibility Operations abide to strict rules . There is no room for " feelings " to be expressed and there is also no telephone number to call aircraft when they are not on your own VHF frequency .

Let me try to explain what would (could) be the normal process, in normal International operations.

What the controller could have say on first call was : Visibility 200m in Fog what are your minimas and your intentions ?
The answer would have been from the Pilot : xx meters and XX airfield.

Trying to perform an NDB APP on these conditions ( to verify weather conditions ) is perfectly normal and done everywhere in the world. No controller can prevent this and so far no problem.

A briefing in the cockpit then established who does what, including " Decision height is XXX meters, in case go around, we climb to xx meters on xxx heading until etc..

The controller , having here access to some kind of Precision App radar (PAR) can monitors height and course during the temptative APP and advise . These are not "orders" or instructions as we call those, which are very phraseology-specific, but information. When passing Decision height (DH) if runway (lights) are not in sight, pilot goes around., if he sees them he lands . Pilot decision to do so , not Controller.

After go around , and safe above Minimum Safe Altitude , the decision of what to do next ( hold , or divert to another airport ) depends primarily on fuel on board remaining and the weather forecast.
The selection of Diversion airport is NOT an ATC decision but only that of the Pilot, or their Operations (base) . Selecting an airport which is closed by Notam can be a problem but they had selected another alternate, which was open. So no issue there , (only to show that someone in Polish OPS planning did not read Notams before making the Flight plan ) Not good but happens to everyone once in a while, even in large airlines .

So if this had been done a unhappy President would have landed in Minsk and everyone else on board would probably still be alive today.

Under Military operations the procedures are different, but they did not apply here. That is unfortunately what the " Polish side" is apparently trying to mix up in the mind of its population , probably to try to divert the "blame" of this preventable tragedy towards the Russian side.
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