President of Poland killed in plane crash

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/8612825.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash

The pilot was an idiot. He decided to go with the original flight plan despite the airport being closed due to heavy fog. -_-

Poland has (had) a president?

Shot down?

Jimmy91 said:

The pilot was an idiot. He decided to go with the original flight plan despite the airport being closed due to heavy fog. -_-

No details are known so cut the crap.

The only weird thing so far is that the 154M has a minimal landing distance of 2100m-2400m, while the landing strip at Smolensk is only 1600m long.

Poor president.

Belial said:

No details are known so cut the crap.

You need to tell that to the Russians:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/10/poland-president-lech-kaczynski-killed

The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and his wife were among 96 people killed when their plane crashed in thick fog on its approach to a regional airport in Russia early this morning.

The governor of the west Russian town of Smolensk confirmed there were no survivors from the Tupulov Tu-154 plane, which came down at 11am (7am GMT) about a mile (1.5km) from Smolensk airport.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart. Nobody has survived the disaster," Smolensk governor Sergei Anufriev told the Russia 24 news channel.

The Polish government will hold an emergency meeting later today. Officials said the head of the Polish army, the governor of the central bank and the head of the presidential administration were also on board the plane, as well as the families of other senior officials.

"The plane caught fire after the crash," said a Polish foreign ministry spokesman in Warsaw. "Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane."

The pilot was told Smolensk airport was closed because of thick fog, according to the news agency Interfax. He was offered a choice of landing instead at either Moscow or Minsk, the capital of Belarus, but decided to continue with the original flight plan to Smolensk.

The pilot made three unsuccessful attempts to land before the crash. On the fourth try the plane fell apart, Interfax said, citing officials at Smolensk's interior ministry.

Russia's foreign ministry confirmed the cause of the air catastrophe was bad weather. "According to provisional information the crash happened because the plane failed to land at the military airport near Smolensk in conditions of severe fog," one official said.

my condolences to the polish nation. the president, his wife, the governor of polish central bank, the chief of general staff and many other chiefs of the polish army, vicechairmen of the parliament, number of members of the parliament and senate, the polish ambassador in russia, and the list goes on. this must be a huge blow to the whole state leadership.

it really seems it was an error in human judgement, 3 previous unsuccessful attempts to land in foggy weather are almost suicidal from the pilot. sorry if i speculate wrongly, but it's not uncommon that important people pressure their pilots to take unnecessary risks just to avoid being late at their destination. the delegation would probably miss the katyn memorial if they flew to a different airport.

Mr. T said:

Shot down?

what the hell is your problem?

My condolences to all involved and affected by this tragedy.

Hm. I saw something about this on 4chan and thought they were trolling.

I saw it on /k/ and I thought it was BS. This is very tragic. Just like the CIA killing Princess Diana, or the Lockerbie disaster. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased.

neubejiita said:

Just like the CIA killing Princess Diana

All this conspiracy talk is retarded. And hell that's not even the right one, idiots kept saying M16 did it.

Since when did public figures become immune to accidents?

I mourn for Poland. They seem to get the short end of the stick all the time. However, they have some of the hottest women in the world there...

Seriously though, this is a huge blow for their government. This would be like if we lost the President, his wife, several of the chiefs of staff, and a large chunk of congress. While I bet there are people in this country hoping for that to happen, it would be a huge tragedy and really cripple the country for a while.

I hope they can get everything fixed up in due time from the sudden vacuum of political figures in their government.

I like how the BBC article has to remind us that the plane was "a 20 year old design OMGZ". Quite apart from the fact Air Force One is a 40 year old design and nobody goes on about that, i don't think having some new "smart forflight" with airbags and pretensioning seatbelts would have helped a great deal, so shut up BBC.

the czech media made similar implications about the plane (omfg old russian junk) even though every pilot or expert they asked told them it was sturdy design well liked for it's reliability and easy maintenance. but the media need to fill a lot of time and space in their specials, so let's invent crap.

Good lord this is tragic. My thoughts go out to the entire nation of Poland right now. I really hope you guys can get back on your feet after this.

No point in denying the planes are old junk that kept breaking down in recent years. One of the Tupolevs was always grounded and used for spare parts to keep the other one in the air. There's been talk for at least 7 years now about replacing them along with the Yaks, ever since the prime ministers helicopter went down. One of the Yaks broke down before takeoff just this morning.

Belial said:

One of the Tupolevs was always grounded and used for spare parts to keep the other one in the air.

This is common practice with a lot of plane models.

Mr. Freeze said:

My condolences to all involved and affected by this tragedy.

This. :(

It strikes me as odd that the Polish Government didn't have rules against that many important officials being on the same flight.

A very sad, real moment, for the country.

Conspiracy?

It's dumb to say that the jet's model was too old. The DC-10 and 747 are the most widely-used jet liners in America, and they were both designed in the 60s. OH NOES, WE HAVE 40-YEAR OLD JET MODELS ALL OVER THE PLACE!! Yes, the lists of crashes they've been involved in are miles long, but that's just because they're everywhere.

Mr. Freeze said:

My condolences to all involved and affected by this tragedy.

Agreed. This tragedy is really bad, because the poles lost their president :-( ...

While I don't know the specifics on the particular model involved here, multiple models of Soviet passenger jets had a terrible safety record. James Oberg relates in "Uncovering Soviet Disasters" that the Chinese (during the '60s or early '70s), despite being having their jet production set up by the Russians, bought a license to manufacture the Boeing 707 and scrapped all their Russian aircraft due to frequent accidents. I think it says something when the Maoist Chinese bought a license to produce an American aircraft because the Russian design was too dangerous.

This tragedy's most likely the result of what's quaintly termed controlled flight into terrain, in which case the make and model of aircraft is pretty much irrelevant.

My condolences to the people of Poland.

From what I've read President Kacyznski had a previous incident during the Russian/Georgian war in 2008 where the pilot refused to fly into a warzone against his requests. It seems like he was a man who was dead set on what had to be done, and as a result it ended up in the deaths of almost a hundred people, many high ranking officials. It's a terrible situation and I feel for the country as a whole. I can't imagine suddenly losing that large of a portion of your government, and I hope there's not an extreme power vacuum. Especially since it could've been avoided by adding another three hours to the trip and landing in Moscow. Poland seemed the best off of all of the ex satellite states, and even showed growth last year compared with the rest of Europe. I hope the best for the country, but I don't think conspiracy theories are going to help when the President has shown in the past to take duty over safety, and it's a shame for him, the people on the plane, their families, the country and the world. Best of luck to you Poland, I hope the country recovers from this.

Dr. Zin said:

I think it says something when the Maoist Chinese bought a license to produce an American aircraft because the Russian design was too dangerous.

Of course, just because they were both Communist it doesn't mean the saw eye to eye. If the shit had hit the fan they probably would have "stuck together" (for the 2-3 minutes before the world was blown back to the stone age and countries ceased to matter, anyway). It's possible that they no longer had access to Russian designs and/or wanted to spite Russia by going to 'the enemy'

Dr. Zin said:

While I don't know the specifics on the particular model involved here, multiple models of Soviet passenger jets had a terrible safety record. James Oberg relates in "Uncovering Soviet Disasters" that the Chinese (during the '60s or early '70s), despite being having their jet production set up by the Russians, bought a license to manufacture the Boeing 707 and scrapped all their Russian aircraft due to frequent accidents. I think it says something when the Maoist Chinese bought a license to produce an American aircraft because the Russian design was too dangerous.

It doesn't say a lot, in that exact time frame China and the USSR were engaged in a war with each other. Doh

I'm not sure why the type of plane matters. The pilot made three passes at the airport in dense fog, at a runway that was probably too short for the plane in the best conditions. They picked a bad runway, the pilot was probably instructed by the president to attempt to land while there was significant fog and the ground crew was telling them to reroute, and he clipped the treeline the fourth time. Maybe if the altimeter worked better he could tell he was too low, but there are some pretty tall trees in Eastern Europe/Western Russia so if it was measuring ground level it wouldn't do any good with treeline. Tragic incident caused by people doing what they shouldn't do, not by mechanical malfunction.

Dr. Zin said:

While I don't know the specifics on the particular model involved here, multiple models of Soviet passenger jets had a terrible safety record. James Oberg relates in "Uncovering Soviet Disasters" that the Chinese (during the '60s or early '70s), despite being having their jet production set up by the Russians, bought a license to manufacture the Boeing 707 and scrapped all their Russian aircraft due to frequent accidents. I think it says something when the Maoist Chinese bought a license to produce an American aircraft because the Russian design was too dangerous.

Boing 727 is similar to Tupolev Tu-154. There are 938 Tu-154s and 1,831 Boing 727s.

As of 2010, a total of 325 incidents involving 727s had occurred, including 110 hull-loss accidents resulting in a total of 3,704 fatalities. The 727 has also been in 178 hijackings involving 345 fatalities

There have been 66 serious flight incidents with Tu-154s, including 37 hull-losses with human fatalities.

Boeing delivered a total of 1,010 Boeing 707s

As of May 2007, the 707 has been in a total of 166 hull-loss occurrences with 2,733 fatalities.

166 from 1010

http://aviation-safety.net/database/type/index.php?type=jet