ervins

BOAC,

Yes, the quoted FM page says it has minima of 30m for automatic approach or 60m for manual by following FD planks for CAT II ILS. For CAT I it is 60 meters for both auto or FD.
And second remark is that 60x550 is in force for CAT II and also for CAT I ILS with CAT II lighting. In case of CAT I both the lights and ILS, it shall be 60x800 meters.
But as some people already noted, it is of no relevance to this topic.

And no, RNAV/GPS not mentioned there at all.

Tagron

It is not surprising that FMS/GPS minima are not not listed in the Tu154 FM. In its basic form FMS/GPS is not intended to be an IFR approach procedure. According to the equipment fit of the “westernised” Tu154 as posted by Alice 025 a few weeks ago, GPS was certainly installed though we can only guess as to how it interacted with the FMS and how the information was presented to the crew.

FMS/GPS approaches to Cat 1 ILS limits are available in some parts of the world using WAAS (USA) and RNP procedures (New Zealand and Alaska) but it is quite out of the question that any such procedure was available here.

GPS/FMS information can be extremely helpful in planning, monitoring or flying a non-precision approach. But it is only an assistance, and should not be allowed to become the primary approach aid. So in the case of an NDB approach, the NDB limits remain applicable and if a tracking discrepancy becomes apparent it is the FMS data that has to be rejected.

No doubt there is a temptation to think that the FMS/GPS track is so accurate (assuming the correct co-ordinates are loaded) that it will lead to the runway as surely as an ILS localiser,but to use it as un “unofficial” ILS or to reduce landing limits would be entirely unauthorised. dvv in #765 makes a very effective summary of the position.

But we don’t know if this happened. The real problem is that the vertical profile went wrong and we don’t know why - other than the simplistic “they should have gone around”. Hopefully the new CVR transcript and of course the FDR will provide better clues.

BOAC

Tagron - I'm reasonably happy with the way that works, and my enquiry was not about 'FMS/GPS'. approaches but 'RNAV/GPS' which I assume you are aware are available in the UK at some airports.

Are you, in your post, then, definitive in your assertion that this a/c did not have the equipment fitted and/or there was no procedure in the PAF to use such?

You mention a 'new' CVR - any link?

Azrael229

There is one being prepared as I mentioned earlier. The first leak today (which is definately typical media manipulation to make more fuss out of it then it's worth) is that the cpt. Protasiuk said in one of the previously unintelligible parts "They will kill me if we don't land". Obviously it is largely omitted in comments to that that this might have been said in joking fashion and completely natural in Polish.

RegDep

While we are waiting for the additional transcript, please remind us do we or don't we have any indication in the current translation and its interpretations, on at which point lt. gen. Blasik entered the cockpit. I seem to remember an earlier mentioning that he made the pre-flight announcements through the intercom (and might therefore have been in the cockpit from the very beginning).

The crew jokes about a "four-star general" at the beginning of the transcript, but lt. gen. Blasik had three stars (a captain has four) so they may have been joking about a cocky colleague, maybe even when Blasik was present.

The relevance of this (to me) would be that if Blasik was present, it would prove (to me) that the captain was joking about the "killing".

The current transcript has some 10 minutes worth of completely unintelligible passages, and some more passages where only part has been possible to write down so far, so we may learn a lot more - hopefully soon.

Not wanting to blow air to speculations, just noting .

Azrael229

There is no indication in any official documents that I have seen as to when gen. Błasik might have entered the cockpit. He probably knew the crew personally, and even though he was a combat pilot he was also qualified on Jak-40 (there was information inmedia that he used official trips in Jak-40 to make his required number of hours for flight crew bonus pay - which seems like sensible thing to do considering limited staff in the unit and saving tax payers money as opposed to training flights on combat plane) and flew with crews of the same unit before as a crew member, so he was probably welcome in the cockpit not only because of rank and command held.

Karel_x

Link fo google tranlation:
Google Translate

gstaniak

I started a quick and dirty translation of the Jak-40 engineer interview before I read here that everybody is just happy with what Google Translate produces . Anyway, here it is:

TVN24.pl interviewing Remigiusz Muś

Sorry for errors and places where I missed the proper jargon, I'm not a pilot.

But I must say I smell something fishy here. Sorry to divert your attention with linguistic detail again, but I'd love to hear what was was actually recorded on the tape recorder in the Jak-40 -- it amazes me how the MAK specialists and apparently the Judicial Research Institute specialists in Poland both heard "sto" (100) when what was said was "pyatdyesyat" (50). Those two words sound nothing like each other, in both Russian and Polish.

mbar

A better translation: "They are going to kill me if we don't land."

peter we

14.07.2010 16:06
Tu-154 pilot under pressure, black boxes reveal - TheNews.pl :: News from Poland

ARRAKIS

I'm convinced they were talking about gen. Blasik. Based on what they said, it's possible he was officially a crew member during that flight.

Regarding minima and approaches at Smolensk north.
http://slimak.onet.pl/_m/TVN/tvn24/smolensk_.pdf

Low quality, but anyway, the possible approaches types are visible. Later RSBN was removed as well as the beacons for the approach from the west.

Arrakis

RegDep

I recall that at the time, the flight units web site listed one more crew member than the media, which prompted BOAC to ask who was, in fact, the PIC on that flight. I think he meant it rhetoric, but....... Of course, cpt. Protasiuk was.

cwatters

A UK newspaper today says there were two visitors to the cockpit and reports part of the first conversation. Roughly as..

"Sir, the fog is increasing, At the moment, under these conditions that we have now, we will not manage to land"

Kazana - "Well, then we have a problem"

a few mins later he returns..

Kazana - "There isn't yet a decision from the President about how we should proceed"

Then they say there was there is a conversation with Andrzej Blasik but no indication of what was said.

The paper implies the source is the Polish Justice Minister but it's not clear.

gstaniak

That's old news, actually. This exchange was published in the first (and only, so far) version of the CVR transcript by MAK.

BOAC

CVR transcript - why is it I get this uneasy feeling at the word 'prepared'? Has it yet been 'published' - even in Polish?

gstaniak

No. From what I understand, the situation at the moment is the following:

• the MAK published a preliminary version of the CVR transcript less then two weeks after the accident -- that's the version that has been quoted in numerous places, translated, available for download etc. (the PDF file with parallel Russian and Polish versions),
• at the end of May, Mr. Jerzy Miller, Minister of Internal Affairs who also presides over the Polish committee investigating the accident, went to Moscow and brought back digital copies of the black boxes records -- as I understand, both the CVR and the FDR,
• the records are being processed in parallel by the Judicial Research Institute in Cracow and an unidentified police lab in Warsaw -- the former prepares the record for the civilian prosecutors, while the latter works for the comittee investigating the causes of the accident (the one led by Mr. Miller),
• the QAR recovered from the crash site has been sent to Poland, processed by its maker (ATM S.A.), and the record has been sent back to MAK -- from what I can gather, the recorder itself remains in Poland and the record has been sent to the two labs mentioned above.

What we are getting at the moment is a wave of speculation in the media based on two "leaks", apparently from the Cracow lab or the people receiving data from them, from the "new" CVR transcript. Allegedly, kpt. Protasiuk has been recorded to say "they're gonna kill me if we don't land" at one moment and then "so now watch how the top gun land" as a response to the weather advice from the Jak-40 crew.

The credibility of these leaks is doubtful, and they might be just as well part of the nasty political business that surrounds the accident. Sadly, FDR records are much less sexy to the media people, so one rarely sees appeals for their publication by the Miller's committee. On the other hand, he has promised to publish partial reports as the case unfolds, taking into account public interest and the weight of the case. We'll just have to wait.

P.S. Actually, to be strict about it, the first bullet above is not true: the MAK sent the preliminary version of the transcript to (probably) minister Miller, and then it was published by the ministry staff.

BOAC

Thanks for that post,gst - I do hope EVERYONE realises that these comments are most probably 'off-the-cuff' humorous comments that we would probably all make in the same situation and I cannot see anything 'dark' in them?

RatherBeFlying

Until the CVR and FDR are synchronised, we will not know which altimeter (radar or baro) the crew was using for altitude callouts.

In the meantime, there's very little factual ground to base anything on. I did do a descent rate calculation from the CVR timestamps and callouts some time ago, but still don't know if that's baro or radar.

The NTSB would have released the CVR and FDR within a week or two; so, what's going on?

RetiredF4

I agree there 100%.
It is typical humorous pilot talk. And it shows, that the pilots had no stress at all in view of the impending approach or the presence of high wheels in the aircraft or even in the cockpit.

franzl

Karel_x

Vertical profile of last minute of flight, the same vertical and horisontal measure:
Imageshack - 67115861.jpg

At the time T-30 they change descent rate to Vy=10m/s (1800ftps) - may be the decision point of the rat run?

-picture made by me-