Hamish,
You've got a point. But the Swiss reporter was serious enough to discard a question of his own presenter as to why the pilot made four attemps to land as "wild speculation" and stopped short of any comment, such as thoses widely spread on this thread... :E

OK I'm outa here, first we have the Tu154 she is good aircraft (may be, but the poor old bird had some pretty crap owners/operators) then the BA CC luvvies (Oh , you are SO insensitive) now we have Wow the tail hit the ground first (well it bloody would if you pitched up too quickly to avoid ground contact)

Jeez, every thread on this forum just deteriorates into tosh within less than 1 day of any accident.

You know what guys, Tu154's are not as safe as similar era Western kit, miltary pilots are great, but hey flying 4 approaches smacks of desperation, and finally , most politicians are parasitic thiefs so forget the crocodile tears.

As in ANY accident, sorry for those who lost a loved one, but really, it doesn't take much imagination to see how this could have been avoided, in a word . . . DIVERT.

Oh, and thanks to pprune for this new "flag" system to see who the 1 post wonders are, makes it quicker to filter out the crass stupidity. Please consider posting on BBC or CNN next time, this is labelled, as I repeat SO bloody often PROFESSIONAL PILOTS RUMOURS AND NEWS are you one ? nope ? should you be here ? can you add something of worth or do you just wanna tell me how insensitive I am ?
Goodnight, perhaps by tomorrow we have some more info on the weather/approach flown and we can speculate (Oh Yes) with some more knowledge.

The aviation "expert" on CTV actually said that he'd received an email from one of his contacts, telling him the aircraft had been outfitted with Rolls engines. Doesn't make it much better, mind.

Instant safety comparison here:

Tu-154: 66 hull losses (Aviation Safety Network) out of some 900 produced = 7.3 %
DC-9 (up to & including the -50 series): 101 hull losses out of 976 produced = 10.3 %

... crude comparison, but it´s in the right ballpark.

Wiki mentions that the 154 only had 36 hull losses, and 66 major incidents. And I couldn't find any reference of any losses due to mechanical failure...

Standard ops ( SOP'S)

can't get in on original plate...DIVERT.... what is wrong with the world.

MCC is very basic training, but if every ICAO country adopted it 1 approach without meeting the plates requirements divert.:ugh:

SYNOP decoding
 

201004100600 Aaxx 10061 26781 31/93 91403 10009 20009 39956 40255 53003 74540 333 20005=


10/04/10 0600 Utc/ Wind Speed In Meter Per Second /Smolensk/ Precipitation Nil/ Manned Station /Cloud Base Unknown / Visibility 0.5 Km / Sky Obscured / Wind 140/3 Mps / Temp+0.9/+0.9/ QFE 995.6/QNH 1025.5/ Nosig/ Fog /sky Not Visible/ No Change/ Previous Weather Fog / 8 Octas Stratus / Min Temp For Previous 24h +0.5 //

Anyone claiming the TU154 is a lesser aircraft than its Western counterparts is talking from their behinds. Most Russian built aircraft are/were built far stronger than American ones, being specifically suited for the rough climate/conditions of the Soviet Union periferic regions. Ask The German AF what they thought of the Tu154 compared with their A310's, ask ANY Aeroflot/S7 engineer about a comparison between Illyushin/ Tupolev made aircraft and the modern "plastic garbage" made in Toulouse/ Bremen...
Russian Aircraft engineering and design was and in some cases, like military IS always ahead of its Western counterparts. ( although it does seem that engines were/are always a weak link) Don't believe the crap that they are just copycats, in fact, it is the West who had more industrial spies and the Concorde is a result of BOTH parties spying on eachother...

Rant over.

I'm assuming no GPWS fitted...?

Capy Playstation

Incredibly small minded attitude and also very ignorant/disrespectful to all who participate in these forums

Just goes to show that volume of participation is no measure of quality of participation !

Plus you seem to be making some very sweeping assumption as to the reasons for this particular crash - very unseemly

Did this particular TU-154 have a CVR ... ?

Oh please - the Russians are good but their military aircraft are miles behind western designs. They don't have the materials engineering at the same level, period.

-drl

The plane sheared off trees over a wide area, meaning it was fairly level when it hit the trees. The tail ended up farthest away, which implies cartwheeling on a wing, so the plane probably hit trees level and then lost lift on one wing and rolled before impact. This one is a slam dunk, they hit trees on a foggy approach.

-drl

foxie
 

foxie!

"guess, who is the head of this commision? putin! former president of russia, former KGB agent, military jet licence holder."

Never heard that Putin had a military jet licence????

According to Russian data, today it was the 68th airframe lost. Around 930 were manufactured.

Arrakis

There are reports that 'both' black boxes have been recovered. If correct, this would suggest yes.

Poland grieves for president, crash victims - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Not much left.....



May take a moment to load and run. Getting a lot of hits.

Nicked from a poster on A-Net

The Kathryn Report

More updated videos, scroll down.
Also Bulgarian Govt. TU-154 for sale . . .

Having glanced trough the list of Tu-154 hull losses on aviation-safety.net, the causes turn out roughly like this:

80% due to crew (Including CFIT, finding trees below the fog, running on fumes, and a surprisingly high number of overweight/out of trim rejected takeoffs...)
10% due to engines
5% due to poor maintenance
5% undetermined

Don't blame Tupolev for the bad stats, blame the handlers up front...:= ...and to a lesser degree, the smoke-generators in the back...

I hope we can all take a deep breath and slow down here for a minute or two. I am sorry for this tragedy for the Polish People. Especially with the reason for the flight.

I just want to remind people that america had a crash a few years ago that included our secretary of commerce. A military version of the 737-200 crashed while making an instrument approach...a sort of odd one mind you...an NDB apch at that.

Pressures exist at all levels of aviation...including military aviation.