ARRAKIS

Second Il-76 approach. I mixed here the controller channel transcript and the the open micro channel from controllers room (marked with *).
To be short, R stands for Ryzhenko, P stands for Plyusnin and K for col. Krasnokutsky. I'm giving just the most importanty parts. To compare with Tu transcript. Something more tangible to discuss, than newspapers.
Everything starts 10 km from threshold

9:36:31 - (Il-76) On glideslope, 8-17
9:36:58 - (R) 8-17, distance 8, 50 right (if I'm correct), on glideslope
9:37:01 - (Il-76) four hundred
9:37:17 - (R) 7, on course, on glideslope
9:37:22 - (R) altitude control
9:37:32 - (R) 6, on course, on glideslope
9:37:35 - (Il-76) - confirms crossing OM, etc
9:37:39 - (R) landing conditionally, 8-17
9:37:41 - (Il-76) conditionally, 8-17 --> in the same situation Tu-answer was Thank you, meaning he didn't understood the meaning of "landing conditionally". Russian fraseology.
9:37:45 - (R) - Be ready for GA, 120, 2 m (wind data)
9:37:49 - (Il-76) Acknowledge, 8-17
9:37:50 - (R) 5, on course, on glideslope
9:38:02 - (R) 4, on course, on glideslope
9:38:17 - (R) 3, on course, on glideslope
9:38:33 - (R) 2, on course, on glideslope
9:38:35 - (Il-76) 130 (altitude)
9:38:47 - (R) 1, on course, on glideslope
9:38:55 - (K) Calm down*
9:39:02 - (P) Send him away*
9:39:07 - (P) Execute GA
9:39:13 - (K) You should calm down*
9:39:30 - (Anonymous) but the Pole was able to land here...(uncomprehensible)*

From 400 m to 130 m Il average descent rate was almost exactly 3 m/s.
It was already mentioned in this thread. Landing conditionally means a descent to minimum altitude, confirmation od RWY visibility by the crew followed by a possible authorisation to land by ATC, else GA.

Arrakis

RockShock

Yet, being such an expert he resorts to stating 'facts' using words like:
- well, that's what people say...
- yeah, well probably Szczyglo said no Russians will sit on this plane
...etc

How is this relevant at all? He didn't involve the passenger, the others did - I don't see how this applies at the accident we are discussing...

And you still try to sell the cr*p about the 'can decide to land' headline, which in fact was saying 'can decide where to divert' - which is quite substantially different - only that it doesn't match your theory about idiots on the plane...

Certainly a pilot of the squadron who quit in 1999 is 'in the know' - damn right looking at this interview!

Thought you were out for good, but I see you are still hovering around chiming in from time to time with irrelevant misinformation

ARRAKIS

Trolling

Arrakis

RockShock

One thing that doesn't match for me here is that witnesses said the Il-76 was flying extremely low over the runway and almost crashed too - so either the GA was executed to late, or the command to do so was given too late. I assume that between 9:38:35 and 9:39:07 the Il-76 was descending - even at 3m/s it's 90 meters of altitude loss. Unless it's like you say - level the flight at 130 AGL and then descend further on visual contact - but I find it hard to believe that you can perform such maneouvers in Il-76 or Tu-154M - though I am just a mere layman (which actually means I should keep out of discussion, but....)

RetiredF4

Quote:
RetiredF4:Sorry to say that, but the thread is again drifting from facts to speculation and assumption.

All Quotes janeczku

If you would know, how to fly an aircraft with deliberate thought below the minimum to the threshold and land out of it, you would also know, that you are then not ending up high at the runway threshold, because you already descended low before the missed approach point and therefore approach the threshold low already.

Being high over the threshold comes from flying towards the threshold after passing the point where the decision height intersects the glidepath, without further descent, therfore ending up high on glidepath. The time when you pickup the lighting system (in this case the beacons left and right of the threshold, which had been explicitely mentioned by the Yak-Crew), the descent ends in a long touchdown.

The YAK does not use the words "by all means", that is your wording here. YAK crew gives a site report, an own expierience, which has actually no official value. If the weather would have been reported better than the official weather, it would have had again no official value either. The only legal weather is from the met-office. The approach itself can not violate minimas, only the pilot can do it by continuing the approach to beyond the published minima without runway reference (for example approach lights).

Again, to commence the approach down to the minimum is no violation of regs and rules. It is not legal however to continue such un approach beyond the published minimums without field environment in sight.

There are a lot of reasons to do so, beginning from the practice to gain for the aircrew, to the good will show for the president, to the final objective to land out of it, if the field is in sight.

What do you know from flying such an approach, from developing weather to good or worse? Fog comes and fog goes, in local areas sometimes within minutes. might be thick like in london or it might be thin and patchy. If you are already there and wish to land, why not give it a try? Performed correctly and not lower than allowed minimum it is safe.
To assume, that every crew, who starts such an approach is a insane minimum buster is far feetched.

We have elaborated over this long time ago. Using R-altitude instead of B-altitude, wrong setup of Pics B-altimeter, target fixation outside, the behavior of ATC with "on glidepath all the time until 25 meters above threshold (where first warning "horizon" happened...... i repeat myself, but those are facts out of the MAC report and no speculations.

If you wouuld ever have done a contour flying with radar altimeter even in a agile aircraft and not in a plump hen like the TU154 you would know, that it would exactly be vice versa. The radar altimeter is the least exact instrument in hilly terrain, it jumps and it lags and it shows only altitude reference, which is already history (because it is just passing below you)

You set in the correct ressure on all available barometric instruments and crosscheck them against each other. Then you would take the lowest indicating as reference and adjust the others accordingly. Now you are on the safe side.

So your assumption is not logical, it is nonsense.

see my point of view from sstatements above. You are assuming again......

Wrong asumption again. CVR states exactly, that they agreed to do the go around in automatic mode with the go around button. That one however was not active due to no glidepath guidance, therefore it would not disengage the autopilot and it would not advance the throttles. It also shows, that the crew had no intention to manually disengage the autopilot and to manually increase the thrust, it was intended to let the automatics do the work.

If you allow me a speculationh here (which i´m very reluctant, but i might be entiteled to one assumption also), it might show the attempt to go around with the button, as it is located on the steering horn. Speculating further, one attempt by the pilot, the other one from the FO. And it could not show on the FDR, because the FDR only records the activation of the mode, but not the pressing of the inactive button.

Did you really read the MAK report? The autopilot was never disconnected manually. The pilot pulled with more than 15 Kg of force on the steering column and did a force disconnect on the autopilot simultaneously applying full power. That was a panic reaction and no deliberate act. MAK even states correctly, that this was not the normal method to disconect the automatics by the appropriate buttons.

It proves, that nobody in the aircraft cockpit was aware at all about their situation until it was too late.

Whatever hard facts and evidence you see, the conclusion out of them is nothing but speculation.

Fact being, they did a lot of mistakes from beginning to end, and those had been enough already to lead to the outcome. You dont need any intention for a scud run or for busting a minimum to crash that aircraft with such a "green" crew when doing such a bunch of mistakes.

The agenda of the scud run may serve the political intentions, but these political aspects have no weight in the occurance of the accident.

franzl

SadPole

Boring misrepresentation. He says "It's what they say" and he means "It's what they[the crew] say[in the cockpit]". (See transcript 10:03:22). But, you cannot even figure it out and assume that "they" means overheard hearsay and you twist your translation that way. One might say you were a little "biased" or something.

It's EXTREMELY relevant because if they have issues with alternate airport choices then perhaps they should resolve them BEFORE flight plan is made, before boarding the plane and not run all around the cockpit during flight as was the norm with Kaczynskis on board. See Kaczynski interview again for details.

He was not just a pilot, he was the commander of the 36th Air Regiment for over 12 years and, lost no planes. At that time, it was also assumed that the commander of that Regiment was the best pilot, whose duties also included flying the President on important missions, which he did. Afterwards, they increasingly preferred political appointees as commanders with almost zero experience, which he discusses in detail.

Now, what is interesting, he never liked Kaczynskis because they canned him for some never determined improprieties as seems to be the re-occurring scheme for them. Someone does not kiss their ass, he must be a Russian agent or something, they smear him, destroy him, and at the end this proves to be yet another Kaczynski fantasy (See Doctor G., Blida stories and many others).

ARRAKIS

RockShock,
this is from the second approach.
Regarding the so called near crash during the first approach, we just know that Smolensk ATC guys were shaken a little bit, but nothing more (transcript). The rest is just "news".

What do you mean ?

Arrakis

SadPole

Some time ago I read that Kaczynski (then in capacity of head of NIK) forced that dude (Płk Robert Latkowski) to resign claiming some massive financial improprieties.

No charges were ever filed but rumors of financial improprieties at the 36th regiment continue and escalate till today – see news.

Now Latkowski is one of the authors of a book about Smolensk disaster, key hated expert whom Kaczynski throws threats against, so it is safe to say he will be contributing to the story for a while.

As you can see, I am willing to share info even if it can be used to discredit my point of view.

ARRAKIS

Quite interesting, because R. Latkowski left the regiment as full colonel, after almost 40 years of service, in 1999. L. Kaczynski became president in 2005 and J. Kaczynski prime minister in 2006, but if you say so.

Arrakis

SadPole

You understand - in capacity as head of NIK - as in Kaczynski went after Latkowski as head of NIK long, long time agou?

Regardless if it makes sense or not - I am only telling you that because this is one of the stories being put out by Kaczynski camp - Kaczynski tried to catch Latkowski which led to him being forced to resign – ergo, he is evil, biased, etc, etc.

Some of the interesting charges Kaczynski levied at Latkowski as head of 36th was that Latkowski assigned planes to politicians HIMSELF and had little regard for what politicians wanted. I guess, with him gone, Kaczynski did get what he wanted.

ARRAKIS

Polish GAO. Yeah, he left that institution in 1995

Sorry for that OT.

I wonder, if it will be possible to hear it on the CVR. That's, as I understand it, one of the main goals of the tests with the second aircraft. To hear what was pressed/switched/etc...

Arrakis

janeczku

@RetiredF4

You do make a lot of sense in your posting and i dont question your experience as a military pilot. But:

1. There is no "decision height" in a non-precision approach. You probably mean the point where MDA intersects the glidepath, which was the missed approach point according to charts.

2. So what you suggesting is that they leveled out at MDA and got themselfs above the glidepath past missed approach point? Quite probable but that still would mean that they intentionally busted minimas because at the MAP they were required to execute go around but didnt!

Alice025

A blogger in Smolensk forum, who seems to be an ex-Severny employee, that is, not "employee" but with the military there (and wrote knows both Plusnin and Krasnokutsky; said does not know Ryzhkov) wrote a post protecting Yak a bit, in his view Yak "didn't bust all minima-s as journalists say, those journalists", "come on, guys, the weather was much better then; Yak got a go-around command from the ATC only because they materialised too high over the runway treshold."

Tagron

Latkowski's claim that Protasiuk declined to fly to Severny because of the weather and had to be ordered to do so does not correspond with the MAK report.

According to MAK the flight departed without the crew obtaining a METAR or TAF for Severny. Even if they had obtained a forecast it would have been wrong. The fog took the forecasters by surprise. Its severity did not become apparent at Severny until shortly before the time the flight was getting airborne. The crew found out when en route.

Protasiuk may have made some representations about the lack of a valid destination forecast. He would have been entirely right to do so. But we don't know this happened.

RetiredF4

in the sentence before, i named that point corectly as missed approach point. However, as it is unclear what approach they had been cleared to ( not stated by ATC), which approach they flew (probably FMS managed NDB) and what information ATC used (looks like PAR) i tried to describe that point in my own words.


No, it would be called incorrect conduct of the missed approach procedure.

Otherwise thank you for recognizing my post as you did.

franzl

Kulverstukas

ARRAKIS, As far sa I can understand, it's impossible to find any material proof of pressing unarmed button. I have rised this question about УХОД button before, as well here as on aviaforum.ru, and common opinion is that without arming approach mode on АБСУ, all this buttons are not even powered. Also it's not tumbler / toggle switch, which make loud noise when toggled from one side to other.

ARRAKIS

Yes, there will be nothing recorded on the FDR. This is why the analysis of sounds recorded by the VCR will be a part of the test flight, but outside parties involved no one really know exactly what will be the extent of the experiment.
Regarding VCR tape analysis, there were 3 separate teams working on them, and I wonder, what will be the final findings.
Newertheless, most of the missing answers are in my opinion to be found in the regiment itself.

Arrakis

SadPole

Funny. The interviewer asked exactly the same question. Sorry about not translating more of it.

The information about the conflict prior to the departure was reported several times. The argument was supposed to take place in front of airport surveillance cameras. When Protasiuk family raised that issue, Blasik's wife went ballistic seeing it as attempt to smear her husband and demanded the surveillance tapes to be released to the public. They never were, but Blasik's wife went quiet. That's why the issue persists.

Now, suppose what Latkowski says is true and they must have had the forecast for Severny. Why would the crew pretend they did not, how would they do it on their own initiative?

Note that some Polish military ATC testified that "fixing" weather reports so that VIP flights could take place was a commonplace with the VIPs at question. That's the situation now. All starts to fit.

Golf-Sierra

-Given the transient nature of fog I think the weather report argument is being overblown here.

As far as I understood the fog caught the Russian meterologists by surprise. The yak40 managed to land in marginal conditions approx. 1 hour before the crash - already after the Tu had departed from Warsaw. So how could have Protasiuk argued that the conditions in Smolensk are inapproproate for landing prior to his departure from Warsaw?

Besides - this was a VIP flight, which are governed by somewhat different - let's call it economics - than commercial aviation. A commercial operator will always prefer to stay put at the base until the destination is clear, especially on such a short haul flight. On a VIP flight it may be preferable to depart and hold until conditions clear at destination or divert, refuel and fly back - because for VIP flights cost is of secondary importance.

Both options (hold & divert/flyback) were available to the flight. A 3 hour delay (which is what a Moscow diversion & refuel would probably amount to at the most) would not have ruined the Katyn event. (BTW, has anyone asked: How much reserve fuel did the Tu 134 have on board for holding? Was this the max possible given the load? Why not?)

No conspiracies, no pressure. The guys wanted to do a descent to MDA to judge the situation /perhaps they took it as a point of honour to 'try' after their friends in the Yak advised them to 'try'?/ - and then the lack of airmanship kicked in. Come on - you say this guy didn't want to fly as he felt it is so so risky, but then he just tries this 'trial approach' without a proper crew briefing on his intentions. It does not add up.


Golf-Sierra

RockShock

I am looking at the transcript: http://g.infor.pl/p/_wspolne/pliki/2...4_m_213866.pdf and don't see anything at 10:03:22 nor anywhere else where such words would be heard. Plus, you may try to convince non-Polish speakers that that's the translation - but for all of the Poles speaking the language phrase "That's what they say" means what PEOPLE not CREW say, so stuck your misinformation accusations elsewhere and don't accuse me of misinterpretation. Make your mind at last where is the proof of Blasik reporting readiness and denial of PIC to conduct the flight: transcript, CCTV recording or 'common knowledge' that's nowhere to be confirmed.

It's not relevant to the case of accident. It might be relevant to point out that preparations were made improperly, or the flight shouldn't go without this info - but it's not relevant to the accident! The pilot's intention was to try to land and if not possible to divert. You suggest that because of lack of preselected alternate they had to land in Smolensk.

I am sure that in PAF there are many things being screwed and messed up - but this is irrelevant as direct cause of the accident and it's easy for him to blame events that happen 11 years after his departure - I repeat again - that's nothing more than trying to earn capital by pretending 'insider' knowledge and saying things that will easily sell to people like you.

What's more, he contradicts himself saying in same part of an interviev:
- he was not allowed to even start the descent from cruise height over Belarus on hearing the met info
- and in next sentence he says that he mustn't have descended below 100m
- in almost every sentence he uses 'probably', 'maybe', the pilot 'idled' and was not capable of performing any actions
I need to congratulate you on the selection of 'experts' you are having to support your misleading job on this forum.

As pointed out by ARRAKIS already, Kaczynski stopped being the head of NIK in 1995, way before the colonel stepped down from the squadron lead. In your fury against Kaczynski you even start mixing people and treating them as one person: Ziobro, Kaczynski #1, Kaczynski #2 etc - indeed I am impressed by your persistence!