Posted on 05/26/2010 5:41:01 AM PDT by Freelance Warrior
"The pilots ignored all the warnings by the aircraft autromatic safety systems and took excessive risk. Why? They had been taught to do so", says Mr. Klich, the head of the Polish investigative committee.
The airport near Smolensk had no guidance system for the aircraft ILS. They should have quit landing when seeing not the runway at altitude 100 m - the missed approach minimum. (MAM)
Mr. Klich revealed that the voice recording show that the pilots were deliberately lowing the plane below MAM. There are commands: "90 meters", "80 meters".
Klich emphasized that the crew received automated warnings from the safety systems, but they didn't react even to last one "Terrain ahead!".
(Excerpt) Read more at translate.google.com ...
It was fairly obvious from the start what happened. They were determined to land that aircraft...............and they did........
One would think that the pilots would have been extra cautious with such a passenger list. The question is, were they able to respond and react to the warnings they were given or were they somehow incapacitated?
The article and translation don't make it clear whether these are said by the pilots or some automated system on the plane. If (as it appears to me) these were from the pilot, then they were trying to land somewhere they just couldn't see.
A further question is whether they were landing at their own discretion or if the passengers (like the Polish president or one of his aides) ordered a landing against the recommendation of the pilots.
I'm sure those were said by the pilots since these words have been described as "commands" - a pre-recorded voice message from some automated system is hardly a command.
The preliminary report says they were given, I think this must include the fact that the voice messages are heard on the tape.
Speaking on the psychological pressure, the Polish Air Force Commander Gen. Blasik was in the cockpit during landing (Klich said it to a Polish radio station yesterday). The delegation was late for the mourning ceremony: at first the flight was re-scheduled an hour later and secondly, the actual flight was 30 mins late. If they hadn't landed in Smolensk they would have had to drive either 60 miles from Vitebsk (that's another state, Belarus), or 200 miles from Moscow.
I would agree if it were written in English or translated by a skilled person. However subtleties like that can be lost in a computer translation. Could "warning" or "announcement" be mistranslated as "command"? I don't know. If it was German or Spanish I might have a chance at looking it up, but I don't have any way other than machine translations to find what "Padały komendy" means.
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