BOAC
 

With all respect due, Sir, I think you are not completely correct. IMHO, what vorra described above was the way the flight was flown, hence at 10:34:58.0, the controlled asked "Have you landed on military airports before?" and the Captain responded at 10:35:03.0 "Yes of course".

Reg

RegDep - in your 'EU' location, how many 'PAR's have you flown?

Actually scrub that. Since the PAF TU never appears to have requested or been offered a 'PAR' it does not matter.

BOAC
 

To answer your (scrubbed) question, for the sake of transparency: None, Sir.

To your scrubbing comment: My point exactly: The procedure worra and Alice have described needed not to be requested and was was applied by the controller, who (somewhat indirectly) asked for confirmation from the crew that they knew the drill.

Reg

Alice,
here, 3rd post from the top of the page, he claims there was a RSP-10 MN system.

? ????????? ???? ??????? • ?????????? ?????


Regarding the approach flown, it's maybe obvious, but in foreign airspace, PAF aircraft has to fly respecting the destination airport/airbase rules.
Now, what were exactly those rules at XUBS the 10.04.2010? Was "101" a civil aircraft to Smolensk ATC or a military one? Questions. More questions. So far without answers.


Arrakis

reg - "was applied by the controller" that is as maybe - I do not see it, BUT since the aircraft took no notice of it, the controller might as well have been out walking the dog for all the difference it made. The controller can ask and request whatever he or she wishes, but does not fly the a/c.

I just cannot see how 'vorra's' pilot had a chance in hell of getting his (or the other 9) a/c down in bad weather with that procedure. It strikes me that the approaches to Smolensk would have been littered with crashed Migs and Su's:ugh:

As I can gather from other things posted, the controller can do a lot more talking than mentioned above during landing, especially in difficult conditions and if requested so by the pilot. So it seems this differs.

BOAC
 

I understand.

The remaining point here to me would be (just for general interest): Did the ATC give the same service to the PAF Yak-40 90 minutes before and did they read back their altitude? But this one as a mere mental note, not as a question.

Thanks
Reg

Impossible for us to know, I think, Reg, and I believe better weather conditions?

Azrael229, OK, and if to forget ab the equipment - could the expression mean: "This is a desolate hole at the end of the world" ?

Because either that or they meant the physical, straightforward, ravine. Unless they thought the aerodrome is at the bottom of a ravine?!!!??(a sudden thought)

Arrakis I am sorry for misleading all re No 10. I give up on it. Must be I misunderstood it. Because at the end pages somewhere in the Smolensk blog - I have a clear impression the same very Energetik with the same very wolfie avatar insisted on No 6.
Badly charactered man :o))), as I said. Can't be consistent in one blog!

BOAC, the pilot in question didn't sow the Smolensk suburbs with his Migs :o), but then that one isn't a local, positioned in Siberia. And as I understood him this tricky complex positioning-re-positioning from "dot" to "dot" - when still afar from the aerodrome - did help him somehow in bad weather exactly - to eventually appear at the correct place to start his last leg of the journey of 40 sec.
Not that I understood how.
To me this prelimenary dashing seems strange esp the 30m/sec leg, but somehow he finds it the procedure, a sure way to get home :o), in bad visibility.

BOAC, may be it will help you to understand if I complete the quotation, as I left the last sentence out. "Your Western friends who are asking - they simply don't understand what kind of crap electronics we have had".

Now, when I imagine 10 planes to land, within set short time, none has means on board to know where he is, the only orientation is barometers, say, a compass :) and what ground control says - this tricky dance may make sense. May be it is plannned so that none cross ways with each other whatever they do (within reason and procedure).

Re what Alice is quoting, you have to remember that the MiG pilot is talking about quite a long time ago, also.

About the radar, as it has been explained, the radar screen shows the vertical position of the aircraft in relation to the glideslope, but it does not show the exact value for height. What can be read from the screen is whether the aircraft is within a certain acceptable height range. While distance from runway and lateral deviation is known precisely (presumably, as it is what the ATC quotes back at the pilot).

But it has become a linguistics and semiotics thread long ago. Which is surprising and even frightening (as the landing process should not depend on semiotic or communication skills?). And extremely interesting (alas! - the price in humal lives way too high). As practically every utterance, remark and phrase has the tag "What did he/they mean?" on it by now. Even the supposedly most understandable numeric ones (Why did he say 100 m twice? Did the Captain interpret it wrong (that they had levelled out)? Baro Alt or Radalt? etc). 'Culture clash' actually is something to be expected, but still it's interesting to see how things are gradually being sorted out, including the mess with Latin and Cyrillic alphabet.
Lots of things to be thought about.
In my linguistic mind the ATC's "Have you landed on military airfields before?" is very interesting. Did he have doubts by then? Why didn't he ask about what was bothering him? And the reply - yes - is a textbook example on why very strict rules and procedures have to be followed in some fields, e.g aviation. As evidently this "yes" conveys no information at all, the captain did not know or follow the rules the ATC had in mind at all.

And I do hope this goes to aviation textbooks.

The ATC man had very good reasons to ask so. Why, requires quite a background on Soviet/Russian avionics, procedures and even culture and history..

Exactly, vakakaa. Why didn't the crew have the background (=knowledge, idea) - that is the question. As they were supposed to land and not crash.
People ASSUME too often - been there, knows the procedure; but then a little something changes and starts a disastrous avalanche.

This thread is becoming difficult and obsessed with language, and which particular box of tricks is where and what the USSR normally 'do'.

It is very difficult trying to explain to people whose skills lie outside aviation/flying - in translation/knowledge of Russian procedures perhaps - that it is easily possible to land an a/c at an airfield, even in bad weather, with no contact at all with any ground control - yes, even in Russia - providing both the ground beacons and a/c systems allow, which we believe they did.

No, where do you get your information from? Mine is directly from Russian military pilots and controllers.

It is definitely possible for people in everyday conversations to use the word 'dziura' in the sense of 'a desolate, remote, shabby place', similar to 'jerk town', 'rathole' or 'pit' in English. However, I don't think it's the case this time: for me it would be much more natural to say 'to jest dziura' ('it's a pit', referring to the airfield) than 'tam jest dziura' (more like 'there's a hole there') to convey this particular meaning. It cannot be ruled out that they meant it, but IMVHO it's not very probable.

vakakaaa: The following short extract is an interesting although a rather hasty translation from the testimonies of the two Severnyj ATC operators.

"Pavel Plyusnin, who was head of operations, told the Polish crew the weather conditions: temperature and atmospheric pressure. Especially important was the last figure, as based on this information barometric altimeter was set accordingly. In the records there is no information about what pressure exactly Plyusnin told the pilots.

Victor A. Ryzhenko, assistant head of operations, led the Polish aircraft through the last, most difficult stage of flight, during which the tragedy occurred. Between the Ryzhenko testimony was found another difference. According to one of the protocols, he showed that when the aircraft was just two kilometers from the airfield runway, the indicator on the sensor of the landing radar blink [индикатор на датчике локатора посадки мигнул] (that phrase does not appear in the second protocol). Prosecutors have suggested it could be a time when the Tu-154 wing brushed against a tree. This point was crucial - then the pilots were unable to raise the aircraft back into the air.

Ryzhenko showed that when he gave the command "Horizon", which means a demand for the immediate cessation of landing, the plane was no longer visible on the screen. Which in practice means that the catastrophe was inevitable."

Amendment (27.6.2010). --- 1. I am reading these ATC’s statements from engineers and pilots viewpoint and just repeating here their statements from other sources, without having any interest in speculating anything. One of my main interests is on the coverage (in this case accident time) of NDB, radar etc systems --- 2) My knowledge of their approach and landing procedures has been moderate, but the listed 10 “landing” types (see #491 above) were not officially valid at Severnyj on the 10th April. The airport was not, since Oct 2009, any more in official regular (military) use. Pardon my generally clumsy language, I do reseach in a special place for disabled people.