Polish President, Army Chief, National Security Head, & Many MPs All Killed In Plane Crash

by Thomas
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The President of Poland, his wife, and approx. 130 other Polish government officials and their families, including the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, the Deputy Minister of Defence, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, the Commander of the Polish Armed Forces Operational Command, the Commander of the Polish Air Force, the Commander of the Polish Army, the Commander of the Polish Navy, the Commander of the Polish Special Forces, the Head of National Security, the Head of the Central Bank, 3 Senators, 14 members of Parliament, a Bishop and an Archbishop, and a number of journalists, were all killed in a plane crash this morning.

They were due to arrive in Russia for a memorial service for the 70th Anniversary of the Katyn Massacre. However, the presidential plane crashed in a forest as it tried to land at Smolensk in heavy fog.

See: Polish President killed in plane crash - Plane crash : news, world | euronews
  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    WOW, you are getting more info than we are apparently. HERE they said up to 180 total, though they said this is like a 727, and I don't believe they can handle 180 adults. They said POSSIBLY dozens of government officials.

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author RickyJ
    As it was preparing for landing, the Polish President's aircraft did not make it to the landing strip
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  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    They are now saying 97 dead. The plane supposedly flew BELOW the range requested, and didn't divert. It clipped trees and somehow had some major problem, since debris was strewn some distance.

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author Underground SEO
    I still cannot believe they are allowed to fly all of these high ranking officials in the same plane, surely policy by this day and age would dictate that high ranking officials should be spread to other aircraft to avoid situations like this...
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    • Profile picture of the author seasoned
      Originally Posted by fryerben View Post

      I still cannot believe they are allowed to fly all of these high ranking officials in the same plane, surely policy by this day and age would dictate that high ranking officials should be spread to other aircraft to avoid situations like this...
      Decorum in the US dictates that the president and vice president travel in different vehicles. I believe all others can travel in the same vehicle though. But the executive, congressional, and military offices all have plans for such problems.

      Poland's current "acting" president was the president of parliment. That is similar to what would happen in the US. In the US, the succession is President of the senate(aka vice president), speaker of the house.

      Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author TimPhelan
        Decorum? Not quite the right word but ******************nice********** try.

        Originally Posted by seasoned View Post

        Decorum in the US dictates that the president and vice president travel in different vehicles.
        Steve
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        • Profile picture of the author seasoned
          Originally Posted by TimPhelan View Post

          Decorum? Not quite the right word but ******************nice********** try.
          OK, I think it IS required, but STILL. Just a quick answer, sorry if it wasn't so precise.
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          • Profile picture of the author TimPhelan
            NO problem. Carry on.

            Originally Posted by seasoned View Post

            OK, I think it IS required, but STILL. Just a quick answer, sorry if it wasn't so precise.
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      • Profile picture of the author Thomas
        Originally Posted by fryerben View Post

        I still cannot believe they are allowed to fly all of these high ranking officials in the same plane, surely policy by this day and age would dictate that high ranking officials should be spread to other aircraft to avoid situations like this...
        As Steve said, if anything happens to a serving President in Poland, his presidential powers are transferred to the Sejm Marshal (the guy in charge of the lower house of parliament) until elections are held, which effectively makes the person holdng that position the Vice-President of Poland, even if they may not be described as such. (And that's exactly what happened earlier today; the Sejm Marshal is now the acting President of Poland.)

        I'd imagine neither the President nor Sejm Marshal would be on the same aircraft for exactly the reasons you mention.

        Still a pretty jarring blow to the government there though.
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    • Profile picture of the author Dave Patterson
      Originally Posted by fryerben View Post

      I still cannot believe they are allowed to fly all of these high ranking officials in the same plane, surely policy by this day and age would dictate that high ranking officials should be spread to other aircraft to avoid situations like this...
      That's what I was thinking....
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      • Profile picture of the author HeySal
        Originally Posted by Dave Patterson View Post

        That's what I was thinking....
        Me too. It just sounds like some really intensely purposeful set-up to me. I'll never believe this was an accident.
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  • Profile picture of the author Thomas
    Seems the victims also include Anna Walentynowicz. She got fired from her job in 1980, which started a chain of events that led to the Gdansk shipyard strikes, and the formation of the Solidarity trade union, which was instrumental in bringing about the complete collapse of Communism in Poland.
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    • Profile picture of the author HeySal
      Originally Posted by Thomas View Post

      Seems the victims also include Anna Walentynowicz. She got fired from her job in 1980, which started a chain of events that led to the Gdansk shipyard strike, and then the formation of the Solidarity trade union, a group that was subsequently instrumental in bringing about the complete collapse of Communism in Poland.
      Wow - there will be much mourning over there then. Those people remember how oppressive communism was and the fall of communism is an event that they still show gratitude for each day. The appreciation of their freedom should bring them out into the streets in her honor. Such a sad loss.
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Motley
    Isnt Russia and Poland involved in some kind of beef with each other right now?
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      This could be as simple as a government official accustomed to demanding results and a pilot afraid of consequences of not following his order.

      Their inquiry may lead to an even more delicate question: whether the pilot had felt under pressure to land to make sure that the Polish delegation would not be late for a ceremony on Saturday in the Katyn forest, where more than 20,000 Polish officers and others were massacred by the Soviets during World War II.

      Officials have recovered the flight voice recorder, but on Sunday they did not release transcripts of conversations in the cockpit or the control tower. Still, attention has been drawn to the pilot's state of mind because of a previous incident involving the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, who died along with numerous other senior Polish government and military officials in the crash.



      In August 2008, during Russia's brief war with Georgia, Mr. Kaczynski got into a dispute with a pilot flying his plane to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, according to reports at the time. Mr. Kaczynski demanded that the pilot land despite dangerous conditions, but the pilot disagreed and diverted to neighboring Azerbaijan.



      Mr. Kaczynski threatened that there would be consequences for the pilot, the Polish newspaper Dziennik reported. "If someone decides to become a pilot, he cannot be fearful," Mr. Kaczynski said. "After returning to the country, we shall deal with this matter."
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      • Profile picture of the author seasoned
        Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

        This could be as simple as a government official accustomed to demanding results and a pilot afraid of consequences of not following his order.
        WOW, it sounds like that IS what happened. It's a pity. People interviewed seemed to like the president. It sounds like the PRESIDENT is respponsible for all those deaths. If he was in SUCH a hurry, and SO demanding, they should have gotten better instrumentation!

        Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author TimPhelan
        I wonder if it is the same pilot from 2008. Probably not from the sound of it.

        Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

        This could be as simple as a government official accustomed to demanding results and a pilot afraid of consequences of not following his order.
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    • Profile picture of the author Thomas
      Originally Posted by Michael Motley View Post

      Isnt Russia and Poland involved in some kind of beef with each other right now?
      Only for the last 500 years, or so.
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  • Profile picture of the author thelogoloft
    Should I say it was a ambush plane crush?
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      Steve -

      Sounds like it might be that old "absolute power" argument. You can make people bend to your will - but you can't control instrumentation or weather conditions no matter how powerful you think you are.

      Info from the recovered black box may shed some light on it.

      kay
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      • Profile picture of the author seasoned
        Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

        Steve -

        Sounds like it might be that old "absolute power" argument. You can make people bend to your will - but you can't control instrumentation or weather conditions no matter how powerful you think you are.

        Info from the recovered black box may shed some light on it.

        kay
        But there IS instrumentation available that would have made such a flight FAR safer!

        Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author HeySal
    Where did the news come from that the President is at fault? That sounds like bizarre US cold war propaganda from the 50's.

    The model of plane they were in was not the best from what I saw of news so far. They've had no funding for upgrading and a lot of them are falling apart in flight. The way the Pol's felt about their President, I'm thinking he wasn't the type to be that pig-headed, but power corrupts, so you never know.
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    • Profile picture of the author seasoned
      Originally Posted by HeySal View Post

      Where did the news come from that the President is at fault? That sounds like bizarre US cold war propaganda from the 50's.

      The model of plane they were in was not the best from what I saw of news so far. They've had no funding for upgrading and a lot of them are falling apart in flight. The way the Pol's felt about their President, I'm thinking he wasn't the type to be that pig-headed, but power corrupts, so you never know.
      WHY would the US do that?

      "I would not say that the Tu-154 is a Russian plane. It is a Soviet plane. About 70 percent of the military aviation of the Polish army consists of the aircraft made at the end of the Soviet era. The situation with civil planes is the same. More than a half of civil planes in Poland were made in the USSR. Many of them had to have their engines replaced several times already. One can understand the Poles, because Soviet and Russian aircraft have earned reliable reputation in the world. Tu-154 planes crashed in Poland twice. Both crashes were caused because of poor repairs, as it was determined later," the specialist said.

      ...

      The black boxes of the crashed airliner have been delivered to the special laboratory of the International Aviation Committee. The majority of experts say that the tragedy happened because of the crew.

      The plane was technically sound. The pilots were warned about the unfavorable weather conditions, but they decided to land anyway. Two planes landed on the military airdrome of Smolensk before the Tu-154 of Poland. A Yak-40 with journalists on board landed successfully. The military Il-76 preferred not to take risks and asked for landing at Moscow's Vnukovo. It is worthy of note that the Il-76 was piloted by a very experienced pilot who was very familiar with the area.

      "Military airdromes are equipped with the Katet landing system. The difference between the military and the civil systems is as follows. The glide path beacons of Katet are placed some 50 meters in front of the landing strip. In other words, a plane nears the beacons, pilots steer the plane and then the strip begins. In civil airdromes, the beacons are placed from the very start of the strip, and the pilot steers the plane above the strip. This is the first aspect. The second one is about the fact that the majority of civil airdromes, especially those, on which presidential liners land, have special light fields, on which planes land.

      "Of course, the Tu-154 has the Katet system. You can turn it on and the system will take you to the place where the landing strip begins, but not to the strip itself. Afterwards, a pilot looks for the light field, which most likely does not exist on military airdrome. The crew of the crashed plane was looking for land - it is absolutely clear. That crew was used to flying on civil airdromes. They could probably land on military airdromes, but it was most likely not a typical case for them.

      "The plane crashed 300 meters before the landing strip. The fact that the plane broke into many pieces and everyone on board died means that the vertical speed was more than 7 meters per second. This is a very large vertical speed for landing. A plane may develop this speed when a pilot tries to correct a mistake," an expert, who wished to remain anonymous said.

      Another Russian exert believes that the tragedy in Smolensk has a prequel, which took place on August 12, 2008. The aircraft commander of the Tu-154 of the Polish government refused to land the plane in Tbilisi, Georgia, for safety reasons and landed the aircraft in Azerbaijan, despite Lech Kaczynski's protests.

      "The aircraft commander and all of his passengers stayed alive. In the recent situation the commander has found himself a hostage of the situation. If he tried to land the plane three times and crashed during the fourth attempt, one can assume that he was in the same story that happened to his colleague in 2008. Most likely, he was supposed to land the plane at all costs. I would say that it was not the aircraft commander who made the decision to land, but the main passenger of the jetliner," another expert said.

      The crew probably refused to land on reserve airdromes in Minsk, Vitebsk and Moscow because Lech Kaczynski did not want to miss the beginning of official events, The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper wrote.

      The mourning meeting in Katyn was to start at 11:30 a.m. The presidential liner was supposed to land in Smolensk at about 11 o'clock. The distance from Minsk (Belarus) to Katyn - 304 km, from Moscow - 397 km, which is a 4.5-hour drive. The distance from Vitebsk to Katyn is much shorter - 111 km. If they had landed in Katyn, Kaczynski would have been just an hour late for the ceremony. The Polish president apparently did not want people to think of him as an unpunctual person. In addition, landing in Belarus or in Moscow would have been politically incorrect, taking into consideration Poland's tense relations with the two countries.
      OK, I admit it, this wasn't in a polish paper. I saw another publication earlier, and decided to look for THAT. Is it american? NOPE! IT IS RUSSIAN! PRAVDA!

      But if the US, or russia, lied about this, it would be an international incident!

      Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author HeySal
    LOL - didn't see the report in quotes on your post Kay - just thought it was quoting someone's earlier post. I blame a raging allergy cold for missing it.

    In light of that - wouldn't ya think that a qualified pilot would be more afraid to follow an order that he knew could get everyone, including himself, fried than to disobey a dangerous order?

    It reminds me of the story about the coachman who took Ted Roosevelt from Central City to Idaho Springs in 12 minutes because TR was late for something. TR pleaded with the guy to slow down and he told the pres "Sir, I am more concerned for my own hide than yours". Shut the Pres up but when he got out of the rig (horse drawn carriage) he brushed himself off and said "Oh My God". That has been the unofficial name of the road since and once you travel it there will be no questions why.

    I know - that's all beside the point. Just made me think of it.
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  • Profile picture of the author HeySal
    WHY would the US do that?
    Because our press lies all the time about all sorts of things. Why would we hear lies about this event? Who knows. But I never put it past them any more. After some of the crap I've heard spewed in our newspapers and via our airwaves, I find it hard to take ANYTHING they say at face value until I look into it further.

    BTW - That report on the planes looks like the one I read.
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    • Profile picture of the author Thomas
      Originally Posted by HeySal View Post

      Because our press lies all the time about all sorts of things. Why would we hear lies about this event? Who knows. But I never put it past them any more. After some of the crap I've heard spewed in our newspapers and via our airwaves, I find it hard to take ANYTHING they say at face value until I look into it further.

      BTW - That report on the planes looks like the one I read.
      Here's something that might interest you, Sal. It's a video taken immediately after the crash. Watch the first one below, and then the second, which is the same video with annotations added.

      This video already had conspiracy theorists hopping up and down but, now, it appears the guy who filmed has supposedly been stabbed by unknown persons, survived, and was then stabbed again (to death), also by unknown persons, while in hospital! (Take that with a grain of salt though. There's a reason I said "supposedly" and I haven't seen it reported by any English-language media, not that that would be very likely anyway.)

      Dunno what to think myself. There are many possible explanations, and it is entirely possible to seriously misinterpret a somewhat grainy video (for example, I don't think the "white man" in the second video is actually a man at all). It may even be a creative hoax (with mistranslations, and apparent shots added afterwards), perhaps intended to implicate the Russians. Who knows!

      Anyway, it's still an interesting video:


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