Polish President and wife killed in Tu-154 crash

[guamainiac]

I know; a declared alternate and all of that good stuff.

I mean a real back up plan to get to the ceremony if it was really that important. Even if that meant sending an associate to represent them if things went bad. That is the kind of planning you would expect.

Like I said, take a look at the weather and the anticipated temperature spread and figure things out. I'm sure that other countries have the same problem and perhaps this illustrates how much a hard head he was and the pressure the crew was under.

Take a look at and watch the vid of the new head of Ford. Everything was fine in all departments until one car had issues and that (reporting a problem), struck terror into the heads of the departments. When the new CEO congratulated the "problem maker" instead of putting his head on a pike all of a sudden there were problems all over .. and then the company flourished. I came from a culture of terror like that. Everything is fine.

Oldest story in the book ... "Who will tell the emperor he has no clothes?"

[Northwester]

...but a short time after the accident, Russian analysis of the data revealed no technical problems, and pointed at pilot error.

That makes me feel just warm and fuzzy inside, could give someone a hug... any takers?

[Evan]

I feel we have all the elements we need.

Uh... the FDR...

The reason people here feel a need to introduce new theories is that the current theory doesn't seem to be consistent with the actions of an elite flight crew piloting their nation's most valuable aircraft. For one thing, there seem to be missing elements on the CVR.

But again, where is the FDR information? I can't imagine the Russians handing over their findings to the Polish for comments without including FDR plots, yet we have heard nothing about what they reveal. You have to wonder why that is?

Until we see that, we are trying to reconstruct a dinosaur from a jawbone.

[guamainiac]

I think there is usually evidence of a bird strike. Blood and feathers and guts oh my!

[Evan]

I agree, we are missing all the necessary information to make a completely cohesive picture. But I think conjecture - insofar as it matters - should consider the information that's available, and if that's just a jawbone, you don't start speculating as to the color of the dinosaur. In this case, the jawbone is sufficient to suggest an overall structure to the body of events, even if we can't fill in the details. I would also ask what ulterior motives the Russians have in this instance? While I'm not inspired by their lack of speed or transparency, it seems evident they had little to do with the tragedy. The Polish, on the other hand, would be highly motivated to put a spin on the accident that would reflect better on their government leaders. I think we see that happening in this thread, in fact.

Agreed, knowing what we think we know, the Polish have a more obvious motive to distort the truth. Nothing thus far indicates any fault on the Russian side. As Gabriel pointed out, they can't use mind control to force the pilots to continue an unstable approach, or to descend below the minimum without sighting the runway.

What we seem to know is this: They held at 100m AFE for some 7 seconds and then made a sharp descent for some reason. The mystery revolves around this decision, and whether it was a decision at all. If we had the FDR, we could see airspeed, power settings, engine data, pitch commands, control surface positions etc. and this would tell us if the descent was intentional or not.

The Polish must have this data, and already know the answer. If there was a mechanical issue, absolving the pilots and, more importantly, the president, I think they would have been forthcoming with that. If there was pilot error, failure to monitor or something like that, I think they would want to conceal that.

The way I see it, it has to be one of three things. Either they intentionally broke below 100m without the runway in sight (gross pilot error), they mistook something for the runway (excusable pilot error), or they could not hold altitude and depart due to a mechanical issue (systems limitation or failure). The FDR could rule out the last one, and that data is being withheld, which is why I don't think that was the case.

The Russians can't use mind control, but the Polish President could. My "feeling" is that the PIC knew this was a pivotal career decision. If he departed for the alternate, the hardheaded jackass of a president would have been furious (this was a critically symbolic reelection issue for him), fault him for it, publicly dress him down for lacking in courage and promptly replace him (maybe with that YAK pilot that made it in). On the other hand, I don't think such an experienced pilot would drop into the unknown just to keep his job. Therefore, I think he brought it in down to MDA and continued to decelerate as close to vref as possible to get in near the threshold, then saw what he thought was the searchlight "gate" and truly hallucinated, due to brightly lit fog, psychological pressure and a determined mentality, that he had the runway in sight. After descending sharply to catch the threshold and realizing his error, he lacked forward energy to successfully arrest the sink rate with pitch, gave it all the pitch he could and then too much when he began impacting trees, got into a left wing stall before thrust could lower the AoA, and rolled over.

Finding: Presidential recklessness leading to compromised situational awareness.

Total worthless speculation without the FDR, but I suppose it's better to try and make something from a jawbone than use it as a doorstop.

[Gabriel]

If we had the FDR, we could see airspeed, power settings, engine data, pitch commands, control surface positions etc.

Was this a DFDR on an old type FDR?
For many years the FDRs didn't hold much more than a number of parameters that you could count with your fingers: Altitude, airspeed, N1 or EPR for each engine, not much more. Controls positions, control forces, and surfaces positions are relatively new.

[Northwester]

The reason people here feel a need to introduce new theories is that the current theory doesn't seem to be consistent with the actions of an elite flight crew piloting their nation's most valuable aircraft.

I do not quite agree with that. I think there are so many theories (and conspiracy theories) circulating around because of lack of disclosure and lack of transparency on Russian side. I don't think anyone (or almost anyone) would have a problem with the conclusions of the investigation pointing to pilots' fault if it was properly documented and disclosed.
We have a president of a country, chiefs of all branches of armed forces, a general who is about to take supreme command of NATO forces in Europe perish in a crash - situation that requires the most thorough, careful and sensitive approach - and we have Russians doing outright stupid things, creating secrecy that goes almost beyond the best KGB times, denying information requests, concealing information, destroying evidence, changing testimonies etc. They started to blame the pilots on the day of the crash, before any investigation even began. You usually do things like that when you have something to hide. No wonder people get paranoid and suspect things.

[kris]

Was this a DFDR on an old type FDR?
For many years the FDRs didn't hold much more than a number of parameters that you could count with your fingers: Altitude, airspeed, N1 or EPR for each engine, not much more. Controls positions, control forces, and surfaces positions are relatively new.

I'd hope the QAR has much more info.

[Gabriel]

I'd hope the QAR has much more info.

Well, the planes that lacked a digital FDR typically lacked a QAR too. It's relatively new too.

Typically, a DC-9 or a 737-200 won't have either. I don't know about this plane.

[guamainiac]

Evan, the one thing the Russians are guilty of here is setting those search lights in a field. The field was below runway elevation and nothing short of a gimmick that Rube Goldberg himself would envy.

I don't think it was intentional but served as a honey trap and lured them down. More "fine minds" at work? This is "1950's aviation technology that goes back to using search lights and beacons on hill tops to mark airways.

[Gabriel]

They started to blame the pilots on the day of the crash, before any investigation even began. You usually do things like that when you have something to hide. No wonder people get paranoid and suspect things.

When the ATC informs that the weather conditions are below minimums and suggests several times not to land and go for an alternate, and the crew of another plane decides to divert due to the low weather and the crew is informed, and another crew of colleagues inform them that the visibility is 400 and then that it dropped to 200 (where the minimum was 1000), and the ATC watches them in the radar descending below the MDA and tell them to go-around, and the president of the country who is also the boss of the crew and a passenger in the flight has a history of pressing pilots to do things that they shouldn't, well, that's the first idea that crosses one's mind.

I agree, though, that no official source should point to pilot error (or any other conclusion) before an investigation is done (let alone on the same day of the crash). But these things tend to happen (both to point to a cause or to discard another cause, like the typical "we can discard an act of terrorism" stated beside the still smoking plane).

[Northwester]

Just to give you an idea about some reasons why people are not buying into the official investigation, look at these pictures. On one, there is a big part of the cockpit, on the other it is gone.

Some people speculate that part was removed before any rescue crews arrived (there are pictures that show the potential means of removal).

[tsv]

I can't belive how much some people are trying to over-complicate the cause of this crash.

FFS from what we already know the cause of the crash is mind blowingly obvious - they tried to land in fog and it didn't work.

[Northwester]

I must say that I've enjoyed watching your transformation on this thread from:

- you just want to look at hard facts to arrive at a possible explanation for what happened, and;

- no doubt the pilots were being pressured, and;

- surely pilot error was to a large extent responsible TO:

- the pilots were professional, working strictly by the book, and;

- there must have been some technical failure to cause the rapid descent rate as they neared ground zero, and finally, inevitably, where we are now...

- the conspiracy theory, so no matter what is determined from this point forward, you can dispute its legitimacy.

Now that the charade is over, please feel free to share the fullness of your thoughts. That's why we're all here.

I do commend you for the searchlight theory, though - I can see there being something to that. However, if correct, I don't think it absolves those on board of culpability for what happened any more than if they were flying on blind faith.

There is a French proverb that goes somewhere along these lines: only stupid people never change their mind.

- I still subscribe to only examining facts available to us, any theory that i tried to form came from some factual information.
- There was some pressure on the pilots, but after seeing the last flight path graphs, I don't think it was a decisive factor.
- With the searchlight theory, yes, I did believe the pilots made a judgment error, but with the "go around" attempt looking like a more likely option (again based on new facts available) I am not so sure about that anymore.
- You can always try to blame the pilots for indirectly causing the crash (they should have never agreed to fly, should have flown to a different airport, should have executed go around at 300m, etc.), but remember this was a military flight and within the conditions given, they did not cause the crash. But I will be first to admit my error if proven otherwise.
- There is a strong indication that some failure occured around the 1.6km mark. No one can dispute that. You don't lose 16% of your speed in 2 or 3 seconds. We just don't know yet what this is. But I don't see pilots slamming on the brakes. Do you?
- There is a lot of garbage being circulated out there about conspiracies. I am only willing to pull out few factual gems that stand out and beg for explanation. These few I can put in front of you and ask: what do you think?
- The searchlight theory has one weak point: the go around button. Without that it would be still in the running.

This is where I stand right now. I can only hope that more information can appear soon, so my opinions can further evolve and be strongly criticized for lack of consistency.

[guamainiac]

I am convinced you have no background in aviation or just have an agenda.

Why do you refuse to answer the simple question?

You are perhaps the one person who won't give a hint regarding his or her background.

Why?

How can you condem this "secret society" with the agenda to blame the Russians or absolve the Polish crew.

Try this: Take your barbecue and fire it up and then pop a beer. Toss the can into the embers and tell me what you see an hour later?

I'm the guy who lives "on the grassy knoll" and this is just a shallow canard that defies logic. Yes pilots do crash perfectly good airplanes in the fog. It is common, sad but common and has been the cause in so many crashes.

Again, what is your background? Oh, don't I have a security clearance high enough for you?