Investigators: Polish Plane Carrying President Crashed Due to Pilot Error

I was not surprised at all to read what the cause of the April 10 crash that killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski was. Apparently, the cockpit crew of the Tu-154 was inexperienced, did not have up-to-date information on the weather in Smolensk, Russia - where the plane crashed - and there were people in the cockpit who were not crew members and who might have urged the pilots to land in dense fog.

CNN reports that air traffic controllers at Smolensk airport warned the crew on two occasions that there was fog at the airport, visibility was just 400 meters, and the conditions did not allow the airport to receive the plane. However, the crew still tried to land four times and crashed on the fourth attempt. Smolensk airport is not equipped with Western-style ILS, making it almost impossible to land there without sufficient visibility.

The reason for flying too low was an axial depression a few hundred meters ahead of the runway. So the plane's altimeter indicated the plane was flying too high for landing at Smolensk and the cockpit crew decided to go lower. When the depression ended, the plane was only a few meters above ground, hitting trees, which eventually caused the crash. It also looks like Andrzej Blasik, commander of the Polish Air Force, was in the cockpit and urged the pilots to land at Smolensk airport despite current fog conditions.

All in all, extremely dumb decisions and an inexperienced cockpit crew caused this crash; not so much the sometimes obsolete Russian aircraft technology.

To read the entire CNN story, please click here.