Wednesday, April 8, 2015

COCKPIT TRANSCRIPT CONFIRMS CRASHED POLISH PRESIDENTIAL PLANE’S PILOTS PRESSURED TO LAND IN THICK FOG, KILLING 96 PEOPLE, UNDERMINING THEORY OF RUSSIAN SABOTAGE





APRIL 07, 2015

A leaked transcript of cockpit conversations in the Polish president’s plane which crashed in Russia in April 2010 confirm that Lech Kaczynski’s entourage pressured the pilots to land despite thick fog.

Poland’s RMF FM radio station said that the transcripts it published were from the cockpit voice recorder, which was recovered from the crash site soon after the tragedy. 

Polish investigators managed to decipher 30 percent more of the conversations inside the cockpit by applying different equipment, it added. 

According to the transcript, the crew was concerned about the weather conditions at Smolensk Airport and considered turning back or diverting to another airport. 

But they were still pressured to land in thick fog so that President Kaczynski would make it in time to his destination without delay. 

"We will try [to land] until we make it," the head of diplomatic protocol in the Polish Foreign Ministry, Mariusz Kazana, told the captain around 15 minutes before the crash. 

Polish Air Force commander General Andrzej Blasik remained on the flight deck up to the moment the plane hit the ground, killing 96 people, including the Polish president and his wife, the head of the National Bank, top military commanders and other high-ranking officials.

"This is a fact, we must make it to the end," Blasik said, according to the transcript from the voice recorder. 

Later, with just over half a minute before the crash and the Tupolev-154M being at an altitude of 300 meters, he encouraged the pilots by saying: “You'll fit in. Be bolder.” 

The transcript revealed that during the last three minutes the plane was in the air unauthorized persons kept entering and leaving the cockpit, while somebody was constantly calling for quiet. 

There was also alcohol served on board, with an identified person wondering "What is it?" before receiving a reply, "Beer, and you are not drinking?" 

Two minutes later a stewardess asked one of the passengers "Will you drink?" and his answer was “Yes.” 

The Polish presidential plane crashed on April 10, 2010, en route to a ceremony to commemorate the 1940 Katyn Forest Massacre, in which thousands of Polish officers were executed by Stalin's secret police. 

A spokesman for the Polish investigation for the crash, Major Marcin Maksjan, said the transcript provided by RMF FM was inaccurate in several places, but provided no further comment. 

According to Maksjan, the investigation’s findings indicated that neither the pilots nor other people mentioned in the leaked transcript were under the influence of alcohol when the crash happened. 

Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee specialists previously ruled that the Smolensk tragedy was a result of human error, specifically the crew's decision to land in bad weather under psychological pressure. 

A Polish government panel of inquiry said the crashed was caused by the presidential plane's descent to an unacceptably low altitude at excessive speed in weather conditions that ruled out visual contact with the landing surface and a belated decision to make another landing attempt.
Source: rt.com
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PILOTS IN POLISH AIR DISASTER IGNORED WARNINGS, TRANSCRIPTS REVEAL.
ONBOARD SYSTEMS TOLD PILOTS OF PLANE CARRYING POLISH PRESIDENT LECH KACZYNSKI TO REGAIN ALTITUDE, BUT CAUTIONS WENT UNHEEDED 

Tuesday 1 June 2010 12.02 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 17 June 2014 01.40 EDT 

Pilots of the aircraft carrying Poland's late president, Lech Kaczynski, received at least a dozen warnings from onboard systems to regain altitude during the last minute before the fatal crash, according to transcripts from its cockpit recorders released today.

Prime minister Donald Tusk's government decided to publish the transcripts to quell media speculation about the reasons for the 10 April crash, which also killed Poland's top military commanders, its central bank governor and many MPs.

"Pull up, pull up ... terrain ahead," the onboard warning system told the pilots repeatedly just before the crash. It was not clear from the transcripts why the pilots only tried to pull higher when it was already too late.

One of the pilots cursed after the plane hit a tree – a collision that flipped the Tuploev 154 military plane upside down. The last sound recorded was a prolonged curse by an unidentified person in the cockpit.

Polish media have speculated that Kaczynski himself may have contributed to the crash by encouraging pilots to disregard Russian traffic controllers' advice to land the plane despite the poor weather conditions.

The transcript provided no evidence of this, but three minutes before the crash it quoted an unidentified person in the cockpit as saying: "(S)he will be annoyed if ...". It did not make clear who the subject of the sentence was and said the rest of the sentence was unintelligible.Kaczynski and his entourage had been running late for a planned ceremony in nearby Katyn forest marking the 70th anniversary of the murder there of some 22,000 Polish army officers and intellectuals by the Soviet NKVD secret police.

Some 15 minutes before the crash, the pilots told the head of Poland's diplomatic protocol, Mariusz Kazana, who was in the cockpit, that the plane would not be able to land because of the thick fog, the transcripts showed.
"Well then we have a problem," Kazana replied. A few minutes later, he returned to the cockpit to say the president had not yet made a decision about what they should do next.

Russia, which is conducting its own investigation into the crash, handed over copies of the cockpit recordings to Jerzy Miller, the Polish interior minister, yesterday. The original black box recordings will stay in Russia until the investigation is completed.

A Polish prosecutor who took part in a Russian investigation into the crash has said he believes poor training, lack of money for test flights and incorrect flight procedures in the Polish air force all contributed to the disaster.