Polish President and wife killed in Tu-154 crash

[EconomyClass]

8 km! That's a lot of fog!!!!

[Evan]

A trained pilot, handling VIP's at this level, is not, under any circumstances going to put his life in danger, and others' around him to try to make an approach he/she doesn't feel comfortable with.

Under any circumstances? Open your mind a bit.
“If someone decides to become a pilot, he cannot be fearful,” Mr. Kaczynski said.

Just to put things into perspective on this point:

1.: Yes, a non-precision attempt was reckless, that's been established. It has been reported that precision approaches in IMC are available at Smolensk if the aircraft is equipped with Russian PRMG variant of ILS. This one wasn't. Perhaps the YAK was.

2.: Ditto, but apparently not out of the question.

3.: ILS is useless. PRMG was unavailable. Advanced GPS is not listed in the standard upgrade package, so I question whether they had anything more than the basics.

Avialeasing Modernization Overhaul
Installation of a full equipment set for international routes:
- KLN,
- station oxygen system for passengers and crew members,
- RVSM system,
- GPWS (TAWS),
- Emergency radio beacons ARM-406,
- TCAS.

4.: The TU-154 can deploy reversers in flight, at the flare. Perhaps this helps.

Now, please, do the math!!!!!

I come out with -89.

[Evan]

So Ok, how do you suggest to fly this approach in those conditions in a way to minimize the chances that you kill yourself.

Well, first of all, I am a proud elite pilot of the Polish Air Forces, so I am unafraid for my own life. It has been made clear to me that the completion of this mission is critical to the senior leadership under which I serve. I will make every attempt to use my extraordinary military aviating skills to get within sight of the airstrip and abort only if I cannot locate it without descending below 200AGL.

Instead of a standard glidepath or stepped descent to the threshold, I will cross the NDB and descend to my MDA of 200AGL early. I am confident in my ability to do this because my aircraft has been recently upgraded with state-of-the-art TAWS (EGPWS) avionics. This means it will advise me of terrain even in full landing configuration and will detect terrain ahead as well as below. Therefore, I feel capable of safely ground contouring until the runway lights appear, at which point I can make final corrections for a VFR landing.

Something goes wrong. Either I lose altitude (lift or thrust - ice accumulation, rogue reverser, bird...) for some reason, the terrain surprises me and the warning comes too late, or the avionics are malfunctioning. In any case, there is insufficient margin for error. Or perhaps I mistake something for the runway lights and descend below MDA early. It most cases of CFIT, the cause is confused situational awareness.

Oh, well. No guts, no glory, that's what the President says. You can't let fear be your guide if you want to be the official pilot for President Kaczynski. He told me so. And so, as Curtis Blow would say, these are the breaks.

[VANGHELL]

I would agree to one statement Evan said, and have 2 things to say on it. Maybe the pilot confused something else for the runway! So we have 2 problems:

1. was he suicidal, or completing a suicidal mission.
2. or he was lead to believe that he had a runway in sight, when in fact it was something else (in which case, it sounds a lot like murder...)


Hope no one is offended.


Cheers!

[Peter_K]

Please a link, post a photo, or something! I want to see it too.

Like I said, not much of a plate, doesn't even indicate NAV aids, but it's the most I've seen for this airfield. They even call it "Aerodrome diagram".











For comparison, here is one for Moscow and in this case they call it "landing diagram".

[Buzz]

I thought you guys may have some fun with this one. I am not for or against it...just thought it was an interesting twist to the tale. I do not have time to validate all the claims... but maybe some of you can spare the time. Happy debating:

-- Begin Qoute:
According to media, authorities are handling the deaths of top Polish political, military and economic leaders in a plane crash in the western Russian city of Smolensk on Saturday as an accident.
But a day after the crash, many unanswered questions surround the event.
Polskaweb has said that an assassination cannot be ruled out.
There are many reasons to dismiss the official story of how Poland’s president, all of Poland's top army chiefs, the central bank governor and secret service chief died as a cover-up of massive proportions.
According to the mainstream media, the Polish delegation was flying from Warsaw to Smolensk to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of thousands of Poles by Soviet secret service during the second world war.
But the official ceremony marking the Katyn anniversary was held earlier in the week on Wednesday and attended by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Russian head of state Vladimir Putin.
The Polish President Lech Kaczynski was not invited.
How come Presidnt Kaczynski and half of Poland’s government flew to Katyn three days after the official anniversary?
Why did100 figures who are vital for the day-to-day functioning of the Polish government go to a relatively insignificant ceremony, and not to the main one?
What reason could there be for the Polish central bank governor to fly to Katyn to attend the ceremony?
Why did the 100 top Polish leaders all fly on the same plane?
How could security protocols that require that even a president and his deputy fly separately be so relaxed that so many key people needed to run the Polish government from day to day are allowed to fly on the same plane?
And in a Russian Tupolev plane, and to the traditional arch-enemy of Poland, Russia?
This massacre of the Polish elite occurred on the way to commemorate the murder of 4000 Polish officers and intellecturals massacred by the Soviets in 1940.
But what is the probability of a second massacre of the entire Polish leadership occurring in the same place 70 years later?
Why were none of the journalists that accompany the president on the plane as usual?
According to Polish media, journalists were told that they had been assigned to another plane that had had technical problems and they would, therefore, need to switch to a third plane, delaying their arrival in Katyn.
The delay of the journalists in arriving at the scene of the crash allowed a better manipulation of the media coverage.
According to Bild am Sonntag and the Berliner Zeitung, a hotel close to the crash site was sealed off, possible to ensure that journalists who might have seen the crash could not send photos or reports.
A man who took pictures of the crash site using his mobile phone had to erase the photos at a police check point on his way home.
Polish and Russian officials said no-one survived the crash. All the bodies have been found, they allege - and yet at the same time, authorities say DNA tests will have to be carried out on the bones of many to identify them.
Have all the bodies been found? Or not?
Were there any bodies? How many?
What evidence is there that these people were on the plane to Smolensk at all apart from the passenger list issued by the authorities?
It is conceivable that the 100 top Polish leaders were rounded up in a purge and killed or kidnapped inside Poland and that the airplane accident in Russia was staged to explain their deaths.
A map of the air port north of Smolensk can be seen here:

http://maps.google.de/maps?%20hl=de&gl=de&ie=UTF8&ll=54.835896,32.063942&spn=0.110529,0.363579&t=h&z=12%20

Weather reports indicate clouds but little fog.
According to the official version, however, the plane hit trees as it approached Smolensk airport in thick fog, and caught fire.
The plane made four landing attempts because of the fog, according to the mainstream media.
But another witness reported hearing an explosion.
The damage of the plane shown is consistent with an explosion.
Debris was scattered around an area one kilometer.
Pilot error was a possible reason for the crash, according to the official story.
But the pilots chosen to fly heads of state are highly qualified.
Why was the plane flying so low that it hit a tree? Weren’t the instruments measuring altitude on board working?
What was the co pilot doing?
Where was the military escort? The security service detail?
Russian media reports said the pilots ignored advice from air traffic control to divert to another airport.


"The pilot was advised to land in Minsk, but decided to land in Smolensk," said the spokesman, Andrei Yevseyenkov.

But pilots have to follow a standardised procedure for landing and must divert if there is visibility is too poor.
Other reports say Kaczynski himself intervened to force the pilot to land. How likely is it that the pilot would listen to the president and not follow standard procedures?
How likely that the entire army leadership would allow Kaczynski to force the pilot to land. The head of the Polish air force was also on board according to the official story.
Smolensk airport is a military airport classified as a “ClassOne Aiport” that can handle all types of planes, though there are conflicting reports about whether it had an ILS system.
The media says the Tu-154 also has a questionable safety record, and the presidential plane was at least 20 years old.
But other sources say the plane had just undergone a service. A thorough check is routine before a flight.
Planes as the safest means of travel in the world. Hardly any head of state has killed in a plane crash in the past 30 to 40 years. Now half the Polish government has died.
How likely is it that this was an accident?
Who gains from the death of so many leading Polish figures?
The main winner is Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk who has wiped out the entire opposition to his pro-euro, pro-IMF, pro-New World Order policies, even though they appear to be some allies sacrificed on the plane, including the pro swine flu vaccine ombudsman.
Nevertheless, the backbone of Polish opposition to the NWO appears to have been killed.
“Among the victims were key members of Poland’s biggest opposition party, Law and Justice, including current and former heads of the party’s parliamentary caucus, Grazyna Gesicka and Przemyslaw Gosiewski as well as the party’s main economic expert Aleksandra Natalli-Swiat, and deputy parliamentary speaker Krzysztof Putra.
The list also includes deputy parliamentary speaker Jerzy Szmajdzinski, who was the presidential candidate of the opposition Left Democratic Alliance. That means the crash killed the presidential candidates of two of Poland’s three largest parties. Kaczynski had already won the endorsement of the opposition Law and Justice party. He was to officially declare his candidacy in May,” reports Bloomberg.
With President Kaczynski out of the way and the two presidential candidates, the next president can appoint the top army leaders and the central bank governor as well as judges - in short replace the entire Polish government with people friendly to the New World Order and Bilderberg agenda.
Tusk's presidential candidate Komorowski has just said he would set the date of a presidential election which had been due in October forward to June, giving Tusk's party an added advantage.
Tusk appears to be just a puppet for the NWO, operating across countries, and including Putin, who is supposed to be leading the probe in the crash in Russia.
The bodies of the victims have been taken to Moscow.
There is evidence that many government officials work for the private interests of an international corporate crime syndicate, gearing up for the total destruction of nation states and the US dollar and euro to establish a one world government under the UN flagship.
Poland’s top leaders have defied the NWO by refusing the swine flu vaccination and postponing joining the euro, a “must”, according to IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
They have paid a heavy price.
True, Tusk appeared to support his health minister when she refused to buy the swine flu vaccine last autumn. But even the Austrian Health Minister criticized WHO for declaring a pandemic prematurely – but only after he saw how big the opposition to the vaccines in Austria already was.
Acting skills are vital for leadership, Adolf Hitler said.
By purging Poland of its top leadership and opposition, the NWO has sent out a signal, a clear warning to other government figures not to resist its agenda.
It is less likely that the Polish Health Minister will dare refuse vaccine the next time WHO declares a pandemic after this incident.
It is less likely that Greece’s central bankers and opposition parties will push for Greece to leave the eurozone or operate a domestic currency in parallel with the euro.
That, anyway, is the calculation of the New World Order.
The murder of the Polish leaders signals the start of a new era of terror and could be the start of a whole series of purges of government officials opposing their agenda."
--End Qoute

Who are you quoting?
Surely this crash will end up as a conspiracy theory sooner or later. It almost begs for it. 100+ of the top brass of Poland killed -on Russian soil..!

[Gabriel]

The talk about the pilots going under runway elevation, is somewhat unfounded. I personally would find it quite improbable, not to say outright impossible, to do that!

Unfounded?











The first impact was with a tree at 8m AGL and below the runway elevation. Then the airplane climbed (along with the also climbing terrain) hitting dozens of trees in the process, to finally impact the ground more than 500m past the initial tree strike and several meters above it.

[Gabriel]

Instead of a standard glidepath or stepped descent to the threshold, I will cross the NDB and descend to my MDA of 200AGL early.

Except that you were 8ft AGL CROSSING the NDB.

[Evan]

8ft. 8m. Whatever, screw the NDB. I'm assuming it is the decrepit antenna in picture 2. It's not indicated on the bar napkin/cave painting aerodrome chart. At any rate, it still looks to me like they didn't know the terrain, were trying to contour and were relying on the TAWS and the radalts over the baro altimeter. I don't see any other explanation. Unless they encountered something that compromised lift or thrust.

I would be very interested to know if they had ever come in on RWY 26 before.

One other thing occurs to me: the diagram showing the extended terrain profile shows a preceding rise before the ravine. Is is possible that they mistook it for the one they actually flew into, so that they expected the runway to appear just beyond it and were thus flying level at the current altitude focused on the windows and not the RA altitude or the GPWS?

[Peter_K]

(...) At any rate, it still looks to me like they didn't know the terrain, were trying to contour and were relying on the TAWS and the radalts over the baro altimeter. I don't see any other explanation. (...)

From the FAA:

(1) Limitations. (...)

(b) To avoid giving unwanted alerts, the TAWS must be inhibited when landing at an
airport that is not included in the airport database.

(c) The use of the terrain awareness warning and terrain display functions is
prohibited during QFE (atmospheric pressure at airport elevation) operations.

NOTE: This limitation may not apply to systems that use other sources of
altitude measurement to determine the airplanes vertical position.

One of the local AF officials also said that it should have been disabled. Whether it it was, or not it is not known.

[Evan]

This sort of thing... your basic visual landmark confusion...

[3WE]

I will cross the NDB and descend to my MDA of 200AGL early.

Excuse me, I'm just a stupid American who has read read a few approach plates for American airports here and there.

200 ft AGL MDA on a non precision approach?

Gabriel- you are much more worldly.....is Evan nuts or is Eastern Europe much more liberal in their MDA's on non precision approaches?

Or is Evan being off the wall and saying he might illegally descend to 200 ft AGL and that is his "perosonal MDA" for use when the president is breathing down his back......but if the ceiling is below 200 ft....then Evan is through, just won't go any lower, will turn in his resignation, and live out his aviation career posting on aviation photography fora???

[Evan]

Or is Evan being off the wall and saying he might illegally descend to 200 ft AGL and that is his "perosonal MDA" for use when the president is breathing down his back......but if the ceiling is below 200 ft....then Evan is through, just won't go any lower, will turn in his resignation, and live out his aviation career posting on aviation photography fora???

Yes.

Apparently.

Although the pressure might well have been conditioned in rather than in the form of an actual demand to land.

[Gabriel]

Gabriel- you are much more worldly.....is Evan nuts or is Eastern Europe much more liberal in their MDA's on non precision approaches?

Yes.

[Gabriel]

This sort of thing... your basic visual landmark confusion...

Evan,

While your "tween hills" hypothesis matches the known fact, do you realize that they would have been pushing the approach to the point of flaring over an invisible runway? (that wasn't there and that, even if it was, they would have missed by some 40m laterally)

I would guess that while all we have a limit to withstand pressure, we also have another limit of how far are we willing to under that pressure.

No matter how much pressure and how weak the pilot and how invincible he think he is, I can not imagine a pilot attempting to touch down on a runway he doesn't see just guided by an ADF, just because he is told by the president of his country and his boss the head of the Air Force.