Breaking: Plane carrying Polish president crashes in Russia

[Broomstick]

Well, the guy I keep mentioning is a former military pilot, so he's talking based on his experiences as a military pilot. He claimed the landing control radar is an old-ish technology, so maybe civilian airports moved beyond it?

Old doesn't necessarily mean unknown or obsolete - for example, pilots are still trained on old fashioned map-and-compass navigation (even the most sophisticated aircraft are still equipped with a genuine compass - after all, in event of power failure they still work just fine), airports still have windsocks, and so forth. It is also the case that the military and civilian aviation worlds, while having considerable overlap, do still have some differences.

[PeZook]

So...here we are, nine months later. I'd like to do this short follow-up, since these kinds of threads too often fall on the trash heap without any sort of closure or explanation of the incidents in question which...is kinda annoying.

Recently, the Russian Interstate Aviation Comittee (a body charged with regulation of Russian aviation and investigation of accidents) published a report concerning the accident. It is a 180+ page document analyzing the causes of the accident.

Should anyone be insane enough to want to read the entire document, it can be found here., at the website of the comittee in question.

However, the basic conclusions can be summarized thusly (I can't quote the document since it has been secured from copying for some strange reason):

1. The immediate cause of the accident was the failure of the crew to decide to divert in a timely fashion.

2. The contributing causes were:

- Lack of preparation during planning phases of the visit: an alternate airport was listed in the flight plan, but was NOT prepared for receiving a head of state from a logistical standpoint. Also, the flight departed Warsaw later than anticipated due to the Presidential Office insistence to delay the takeoff, thus leaving little spare time in case of unforeseen delays, and contributing to pressure felt by the crew to land at any cost

- Lack of compliance to standard operating procedures: there were numerous violations done by the crew, especially egrerious in light of the poor weather conditions

- The head of the Polish Air Force was present in the cockpit, which might've contributed towards pressuring the crew to land. (As an aside, Polish aviation experts noted that it was his duty to order the crew to divert in these weather conditions ; He said nothing)

- Flying with an engaged autopilot well below the minimum altitude for such

- Late start of final descent, resulting in increased descent speed and the inability to recover the aircraft in time

3. The systematic causes were listed as serious shortcomings in the organization of flight operations and crew training

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Now, there's been some interesting developments about that report: the media went into a frenzy, and the right-wing opposition leader (and brother of the late president Kaczynski) said it was "making a mockery of Poland".

The more meritocratic Polish side had a few problems as well: notably, there's also evidence that errors have been made by the flight controllers at the airfield, and they have a problem with the statement that Gen. Błasik (the commander in chief of the air force) has 0.6 promile of alcohol in his blood, though I find it hard to believe the medical results would be so obviously falsified.

However, the crux of the report is sound, which of course miffs Jaroslaw Kaczynski to no end. When independent Polish aviation experts came out to say the same thing, Jaroslaw Kaczynski commented that had he been Prime Minister, he'd have "special services investigate that clique from certain aviation magazines".

Tusk had refused to comment until the Polish side publishes their report.

[Vympel]

See, what's really interesting about your take on it is that such nuance is totally absent from Western reporting. The BBC's reporting was a mockery - they made it sound like all of Poland was taking umbrage at the report, which is obviously nonsense.

[Thanas]

See, what's really interesting about your take on it is that such nuance is totally absent from Western reporting. The BBC's reporting was a mockery - they made it sound like all of Poland was taking umbrage at the report, which is obviously nonsense.

Der Spiegel was pretty nuanced in its coverage, though you could tell the authors struggled to stay neutral considering some of Kaczynski's blustering.

[PeZook]

That's no wonder-I had trouble staying objective when i heard the absurdity. People like Kaczynski are,of course,emotionally invested in the matter. When Russians uncover evidence of any wrongdoing on the Polish side (Which was pretty obvious from the start to be honest), they perceive it as a personal attack.

Now,there are legitimate problems with certain parts of the report, but even our own posters had a pretty good idea about what might've caused the crash ; I wonder if Broomie hates Poland too?

Anyway, the Poĺish report is due in a couple of months, and from the look of it,it will mostly come to the same conclusions.

There is also a matter of the crew of a Yak-40 that landed earlier at the same airport in the same weather ; It was carrying journalists and other 'less important' people. They are now being threatened with disciplinary action for ecceeding allowable minimums during their approach: the tu-154 crew did the same,except they didn't live to tell the tale.

Another nail in the coffin for Kaczynski's insanity: Even the commanders of the special transportation regiment charged with flying vips around think the pilots had the responsibility to abort ; pinning blame on the russian controllers,even if they made a mistake, is just retarded-and dangerous,as it creates the impression that Poles shouldn't take a look at their own procedures and training.

[Broomstick]

Definitely one of the more thorough accident reports I've read. Of course, given that this is between two nations and involved high level government officials that's not surprising.

What I've gotten so far is that there absolutely was no mechanical problem with the aircraft. This is a human error and weather accident.

For TL:DR (because, let's face it, I'm wordy) - It's the flight crews fault. I'm sorry, but the evidence shows they fucked up. Yes, weather was a contributing factor, but this is mostly pilot error. They didn't seek out up to date weather information. They came in low, in bad weather, and did not follow certain procedures that are universal in aviation and instituted based on prior accidents, that is, they were flying in an unsafe manner. No doubt the Russian report is so very long because they carefully detail the evidence that they used to draw their conclusions.

Some problems with this flight in regards to operational procedures include:

- They did not have the actual weather for their destination at the time of departure. The weather information for their alternate landing site was expired. This is NOT acceptable. This is not acceptable for ANY level of aviation, much less an airplane with (presumably) highly trained professionals flying it. These days it is trivially easy to obtain real-time weather information from airports all over the world.

- The weather at the destination at the time of their departure was below acceptable minimums. Now, IF you have reasonable expectation that conditions will be improved by the time of your arrival you can get away with that (though it's not encouraged) but that's dependent on having accurate, up to date weather information which, as noted, they did not.

- Neither air traffic control nor the prior landing flight mentioned to the accident airplane that conditions were below landing minimums. Of course they didn't, if they had the prior airplane would have been subject to penalties. Yes, sometimes you can get away with this sort of cheating, but, as the accident shows, not always.

- The chief approach to landing aids were NBD's or non-directional beacons. These are old technology, but reliable. They are trickier to use than ILS or GPS but it's not tremendously difficult - I was using them as a student pilot in primary training. This should not be a factor, particularly not in pilots trained to fly on instruments. Anyhow, there was no contributing malfunction in the airport equipment. There was some damage to the outdoor equipment but it's outdoors so it gets wear and tear.

Of concern here:

- The Polish crew had not passed recurrency training on the simulator for that airplane.

- The pilot in command had not flown the Tu-154 in meteorological instrument conditions over 5 months. The international minimum standard for instrument flight, if I recall correctly, is three approaches every 3 months. He hadn't flown an NBD approach since 2009, so needless to say he wasn't current on that procedure either. His skills were rusty. On the upside, the navigator had flown a Tu-154 just barely within the past 3 months, but he probably wasn't the guy actually flying the landing.

- The alternate airport was, apparently, closed at the time of the flight. This is remarkably poor flight planning.

- There were unauthorized people in the cockpit during the landing, that is, people who weren't official crew. This is against current practices which say, basically, only essential people in the cockpit and only business-related speaking during landing (called "sterile cockpit" in English) to minimize the possibility of distractions. Needless to say, this is even more crucial in bad weather than in good. Again, this is something taught in primary flight school these days. This rule was instituted as a response to several very bad accidents. Shame on them, they knew better.

- At the minimum altitude for a visual check of the runway the crew were not, actually, cleared for landing by ATC and the airplane crew did not report seeing the runway. In English, this is called "decision height" because it's your last point to decide whether to land or go elsewhere. If you can't see the runway you need to go elsewhere. This is a very basic concept in flying.

- There is also some stuff in there in regards to a steeper than normal glide slope and greater than usual rate of descent. Either the pilots are inexcusably sloppy for instrument pilots, or they did it deliberately. Typically, this is a pattern seen in pilots trying to see a runway in weather conditions below minimum for a safe landing. Sometimes you get away with it, which is probably the case with the landing just prior to the accident. Sometimes you slam into the ground and die. For the latter reason, this sort of thing is strongly discouraged. In fact, if you're caught doing it by human authorities there are substantial penalties. If you're caught by the laws of physics the penalty is, of course, even greater.


One quote I found very disturbing:

The crew instinctive actions: pulling up on the control wheel which led to disengaging the autopilot in the pitch channel by overpowering and setting the throttles to takeoff position with disengaging the autothrottle occurred almost at the moment of first impact with the obstacle which confirms the extremely low visibility and vertical visibility near the middle marker as well as the failure of the crew to take the go-around decision.

What this says is that the pilot flying decided to go below minimum approach height with its built in margin for error for ground obstacle height. He saw the birch tree (the first obstacle they hit) a split second before impact and tried to pull up. So yeah, at that point he knew he fucked up and was going to die. We know this, because people who don't see what is about to hit them don't have a panic pull-up like that.

Impact forces exceeded 100 g's. That's pretty much instant death. At least they did not suffer.

[PeZook]

HOLY SHIT BROOMSTICK HATES POLAND AND IS MAKING A MOCKERY OF OUR BRAVE PILOTS AND THE GREATEST POLISH PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME!!![/crazy person]

------------------------------

On the unauthorized person in the cockpit: It wasn't just anybody, but general Andrzej Błasik, commander in chief of the Polish Air Force.

Imagine the situation: you are flying an airplane full of extremely high level VIPs. You are already late because you left later than anticipated (on the insistence of the presidential office no less), for a historical ceremony.

The president had already threatened once to dismiss a pilot who wanted to divert FROM A FUCKING WARZONE (Tblisi). Then your commanding officer walks into the cockpit and stands behind your seat during a very, very difficult approach.

Anybody who says there was no pressure being exherted on the pilots is a fucking idiot. How do you, a lowly captain, tell a general and the president to fuck off? Maybe a more experienced and grizzled officer could've pulled that off, but cpt. Protasiuk was more or less my age, with all the authority that entails (none).

Add to everything that the Yak-40 did manage to land (and now its crew are getting shit for it - quite justifiably IMHO!)...and voila, recipe for disaster.

Also, disastrous pilot training policies were a factor: the 36th Special Air Transport Regiment had almost no money for training and pay increases. Result? Experienced pilots got out as soon as they could to fly for commercial airlines, as they got more pay, better training and wouldn't have to be ashamed of still being captains and lieutenants while pushing 50.

The end result was what Broomstick mentioned, that the pilot in command was woefully rusty with his Tu-154 flight time. Jaroslaw Kaczynski even said during one interview that the catastrophe was a result of "the previous government's criminal policies", ignoring the fact that his government ignored the problem as well. And of course now it's not the fault of the Poles, but (somehow) the Russians

[Broomstick]

On the unauthorized person in the cockpit: It wasn't just anybody, but general Andrzej Błasik, commander in chief of the Polish Air Force.

...AND he had been drinking, which I'm sure didn't impair his judgment in any way.

Anybody who says there was no pressure being exherted on the pilots is a fucking idiot. How do you, a lowly captain, tell a general and the president to fuck off? Maybe a more experienced and grizzled officer could've pulled that off, but cpt. Protasiuk was more or less my age, with all the authority that entails (none).

I'm sure culture plays into this. Chicago O'Hare's ATC tower had a tape where a lowly junior controller was yelling at Air Force One to hurry up and clear the runway and he got away with it, but US aviation has a culture where that's tolerated. My local flight school trains pilots for the Chinese government and the flight instructors there say one of the big obstacles the Chinese students face is having the self-confidence to say "no" to unsafe requests by ATC or other authorities. The primary license checkride in the US frequently features the examiner telling you to do something illegal, stupid, unsafe, or all of the above, and he may use quite a forceful tone. If you don't say "no" to that you fail the test. From what I hear, it's one of the more common ways the Chinese pilots blow the checkride (but still uncommon, as most of them do pass the first time).

One of the reasons for the sterile cockpit rule is to avoid the situation where the commander of your air force is breathing down the back of your neck on approach to landing.

And of course now it's not the fault of the Poles, but (somehow) the Russians

It's so much easier to blame someone else rather than responsibility for past mistakes and bad policies. Well, the Poles can say what they want, but the report made it pretty clear to any impartial observer who was to blame and what factors contributed to this accident.

[PeZook]

Well, the government took the official line that we cannot accept the report as-is, filed a set of complaints with it (mostly related to operations of the airport crew etc.) and the prime minister said he'll wait with definitive judgements until the Polish team published their report.

It's just Kaczynski (the dead president's brother) and his ilk (admittedly, a non-insignificant number of people...) who are screaming about mockeries and insults and new Katyn and all that shit.

[Tolya]

Thanks for a good recap mate, I was thinking posting something like this but you beat me to it.

Another interesting development is that it turned out that the plane that landed just prior to Tu-154 approach did it entirely wrong.

It was a YAK-40, a smaller jet belonging to the 36th Special Aviation Regiment (yes, the very same of which the Tu-154 was part of, it's the polish VIP hauling unit) and it was carrying mostly journalists. An official inquiry will be launched, but it is already known that the crew of that plane broke flight regulations and landed despite bad weather & lack of clearance from the Smolensk tower. As the weather was just as shitty, the only thing that prevented it from turning into a similar catastrophe was... dunno, maybe just dumb luck.

[Tolya]

Well, the government took the official line that we cannot accept the report as-is, filed a set of complaints with it (mostly related to operations of the airport crew etc.) and the prime minister said he'll wait with definitive judgements until the Polish team published their report.

Actually, the biggest gripe that our government has with the report is that it clears russians of all responsibility. The causes listed by MAK are all on the Polish side.

Tusk said that such a one sided report will not be accepted so it's not really the matter of ZOMG TEY SAY BAD DINGZ BOUT OURE PILOTS but rather the fact that they don't want to share responsibility.

Also, head of the Polish committee which prepares our own report said that its conclusions will be even harsher

Thats the government. Now, as for the rightwing fucktards like Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Some psychologists say that he is a model example of the aggressive stage of grief. But as I have watched this evil sith over the years, I have a feeling that it is a well orchestrated power play. It is really disgusting to be climbing to the throne standing on your brother's grave, but I guess that is just the way this guy is. Oh, by the way, did you know that it was during his time as the prime minister that the 36th SAR resigned from training on the only flight simulator of Tu-154 which is... in Moscow.

Problem is, his party enjoys support of about 1/3 of the society. And this is the number of people that express outrage over the russian report. So that is not an unsignificant number of people.

[Broomstick]

Another interesting development is that it turned out that the plane that landed just prior to Tu-154 approach did it entirely wrong.

There really isn't a correct way to land under those conditions. Well, maybe if your airplane is on fire and pieces of it are falling off attempting such a landing is reasonable but really, with an intact airplane and sufficient fuel it's fucking stupid.

As the weather was just as shitty, the only thing that prevented it from turning into a similar catastrophe was... dunno, maybe just dumb luck.

I'm sure luck played a role in their getting away with it, but luck is not to be relied on when flying.

[PeZook]

Actually, the biggest gripe that our government has with the report is that it clears russians of all responsibility. The causes listed by MAK are all on the Polish side.

Yeah, which is pretty much what I wrote. And...well, let's face it: the ultimate cause of the incident was the crew's decision, clearance or no clearance. Even if the tower went "Yeah dudes come on land we will guide you down no problem", they should've known better.

As Broomstick said, pilots should know when to ignore obviously suicidal instructions from ATC.

Tusk said that such a one sided report will not be accepted so it's not really the matter of ZOMG TEY SAY BAD DINGZ BOUT OURE PILOTS but rather the fact that they don't want to share responsibility.

Also, head of the Polish committee which prepares our own report said that its conclusions will be even harsher

Yeah, but that's a legitimate grievance, far removed from the idiotic right-wing screams.

Thats the government. Now, as for the rightwing fucktards like Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Some psychologists say that he is a model example of the aggressive stage of grief. But as I have watched this evil sith over the years, I have a feeling that it is a well orchestrated power play. It is really disgusting to be climbing to the throne standing on your brother's grave, but I guess that is just the way this guy is.

Or he's just a deluded ideologue. When he was prime minister, he didn't just scream about being harsh to Russia etc. to placate his base: he was actually pushing that policy with all his might...I'm not sure he's just doing a power grab.

Oh, by the way, did you know that it was during his time as the prime minister that the 36th SAR resigned from training on the only flight simulator of Tu-154 which is... in Moscow.

Well, no. But it does sound like him: a retarded move stripping us of important capability in order to flip Russia the bird. Or just negligence (wasn't the training discontinued because of cost? I can't remember...)

Of course Russia just shrugged and moved on, while we got a dead president out of the deal. Yay!

EDIT:

I'm sure luck played a role in their getting away with it, but luck is not to be relied on when flying.

There was an Il-76 that attempted to land there too. It diverted.