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
//--------------------------------------------//
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.