This month marks the 15th anniversary of a horrific plane crash that killed everyone on board – including the Polish president.
The Smolensk air disaster left two countries in a bitter war of words over who was to blame after 96 people died on the doomed flight. A Tupolev aircraft operating Polish Air Force Flight 101 crashed near the Russian city of Smolensk. The victims included the president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski.
Flight 101 flew from Warsaw, Poland to Smolensk, Russia on April 10th, 2010. President Kaczynski and his wife Maria, were heading to a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre – mass executions of the Polish military and prisoners of war by the Soviet Union at the order of Joseph Stalin.
They were travelling with other official government members, clergy and relatives of the Katyn Massacre victims. Little did they know that would tragically become victims themselves in such an unimaginable plane crash. The plane Tupolex Tu 154 had recently undergone repairs and technicians guaranteed its full functionality. Its captain, Arkadiusz Protasiuk, 36, had over 3500 flight hours under his belt.
As Flight 101 departed from Warsaw, Smolensk was unexpectedly blanketed in thick fog, reducing visibility to dangerously low levels. However, the captain attempted a test approach despite visibility dropping to a critical 400m – instead of the required 16,000.
As they reached closer to Smolensk airport it was clear the fog was still very heavy. The cock pit voice recorder captured the final 15 minutes of the doomed flight. Air traffic controllers warned the Polish government plane’s crew of the worsening weather, and suggested redirecting to an alternate airfield. At 10.25am the pilot thanked Air Traffic Control for the option and added: “If it’s fine, we will try landing but if weather conditions are bad we re-ascend and make a second circle.”
The plane suddenly descended to a dangerously low altitude, veering far off the safe landing trajectory. At 10:40am the plane can be heard hitting a tree, and a second later the co pilot is heard shouting ‘”F***”‘. The warning system was blaring “Pull Up; Pull!” and the Air Traffic controller ordered the crew: “Re Ascend for second circle” but it was too late.
As if acknowledging their fate, an unidentified voice in the cockpit swears under his breath, muttering: “F***.” No more was heard on the CVR after this. By then, the plane had clipped more trees before flipping mid-air and plummeting to the ground just a few hundred meters from the runway. The impact caused the fuselage to shatter and it exploded almost instantly. All 96 people on board lost their lives.
Following the tragedy, conspiracy theories emerged suggesting that the crash involving top officials was planned, though no real evidence ever surfaced. One of the darkest days in Polish history was now to be remembered for another tragedy.
The preliminary report by Russia aviation authorities blamed pilot error for being determined to land when visibility was so poor. A later report by Polish authorities uncovered that there were several people in the cockpit – breaking the sterile cockpit rule – which may have added pressure on the crew to land at Smolensk.
At one point in the recording, Mariusz Kazana the Director of Diplomatic Protocol in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, entered the cockpit and was told by the pilot “Sir, the fog is increasing. At the moment, under these conditions that we have now, we will not manage to land” to which Kazana replied “Well, then we have a problem.”
The Polish report stated that Russian Air Traffic Control were passing incorrect information to the crew regarding the plane’s position – and instructions were given too late. However, it was accepted that the plane crew ignored vital TAWAS warnings.
Minutes before impact, the automated warning on altitude rang through the cockpit but the pilots appeared unconcerned. Investigators discovered that the pilots thought the altitude was higher than it actually was – hitting the first tree at 11 metres, not the 20 they believed they were flying at.
One of the crew members switched the captain’s altimeter to a pressure that changed the altitude reference. The instrument was reset to its default setting, a move that resulted in an altimeter reading much higher than the plane’s actual height above the ground. So when the warning system kicked into action the crew felt safe to ignore it.
Investigators also found that the alarm tended go off near military airports like Smolensk when planes were ready to land – because these airport locations were not recorded by the TAWAS system. As a result, pilots came to view the warnings as a false alarm and became in the habits of ignoring them. It seems incredible that such an elite crew would commit such a breach of procedures.
Both Russian and Polish reports criticize the pilots, while the Polish report criticized the Smolensk airport for its poor performance. The plane had been on an incorrect flight path.
In the wake of the disaster, the special regiment assigned to transport Polish officials was disbanded. A little more than a year after the accident, Poland’s interior Minister Eugene Miller presented his findings to the world. The Russians disputed his report’s conclusions about Smolensk air traffic control. Despite two reports to the contrary, deep suspicions persisted, including the belief that the president was assassinated.
Eventually Russia and Poland managed to put aside their differences and look to the factual results of their investigation – and work together to improve aviation safety by paying more attention to rules and regulation, than the informal approach on both sides that led to such a catastrophe.
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