Arrakis:
No way. You are mixing the PKBWL (civil one) with KBWLLP (military one).
You're right, my mistake. Due to the fact that partly these are the same people -- predominantly, E. Klich sits on both comittees.
RockShock:
I see it more as an attempt to show, that all the points mentioned by MAK as contributing factors to the accident in the FD of Tu-154M were ignored when it comes to the tower - while in fact as it now seems there was no pressure at all in the FD (I mean, more pressure than usual perhaps), while the tower atmosphere was quite nervous.
Correction: the cockpit was silent, the tower cursed. It's a mistake to equalize silence with lack of pressure/stress. And what are the "contributing factors" on the side of the ATC? I hope you don't subscribe to the "they could have called Poland directly after the IL-76 approach" BS. I've seen pilots reply to this blame-shifting with "it's not the tower that crashed" (probably even in this thread). Specifically: what were the
causes or
contributing factors of the accident that you can blame on ATC? Not theories about "what would've happened if (e.g. they called Poland directly)", not sensations about nervous atmosphere or cursing, but actual
causes?
this brings ATC into picture whether we want it or not, as in the PAR approach he has an active role [...] Since PAR approach in Smolensk required active ATC participation, it is going to be more widely covered
I'm afraid we've been there, and extensively too. What makes you think it was a PAR (or RSL) approach? Did the crew specify the approach type? Did they request radar service? Did they follow the procedure for the RSL approach?
Let me quote from the EPKT "orange":
Full responsibility for the safety of a flight lies always with the captain of an a/c, and he is also responsible for the proper assessment of weather conditions. ATC personnel is aware of this -- however, they cannot deny a crew the execution of a take-off when RVR is lower than the required 400 m. In the situaton when the full responsibility for the safety of an air operation lies with the crew captain, ATC can assume that in his judgement the value of RVR is sufficient for the crew to perform a take-off.
(page 31)
Substitute "landing" for "take-off" and apply the above to the Smolensk situation. How come Polish specialists write the above in a report about an incident at Katowice-Pyrzyce, but somehow forget it all when they deal with the Smolensk accident? And suddenly start to blame Col. Krasnokutskiy for "passive attitude" and "letting the crew decide for themselves"? Sorry, I know you have a different opinion, but if I ever saw a case of trying to desperately shift the blame regardless of the truth and common sense, then this is one. It is enough to see the amount of BS completely unrelated to the causes of the accident that was produced during the conference. And to me, one of the reasons for this is that people on the committee are military or MoD personnel. There is a clear conflict of interests.