The mystery of Air Force One

Who is to blame for the tragedy: technology, weather or human factor - learned The New Times

The squadron of the Polish president consists mainly of Russian-made ships: two Tu-154-M aircraft (since 2006 this model is the only one from the Tu family that is not prohibited from flying in the EU zone), four Yak-40s and three M-28 Bryza, which are modernized An-28. In addition, there are 12 helicopters in the government fleet. The crashed plane was produced at the Aviakor plant in Samara in 1990. The board was equipped with avionics from Universal - FMS UNS-1k and GPS. Three and a half months ago, the plane was overhauled. However, this does not mean anything: on September 15, 2009, the second Tu-154 flew to Warsaw after a similar overhaul and failed immediately after landing. In 2008, the presidential plane could not take off from Mongolia - the flap control mechanism broke.
According to the Flight Safety Foundation, during the operation there were 66 air crashes involving Tu-154 aircraft. The overhaul life of the aircraft, according to the design bureau, is 30,000 hours, 11,000 landings, 20 years. According to the general director of Aviacor, Aleksey Gusev, before the overhaul, the dead aircraft flew 5004 hours, made 1823 landings, and was operated for 20 years. Large Russian air carriers have refused to operate this aircraft model (in November 2008 Siberia refused, in November and December 2009 GTK-Russia and Aeroflot).

Chained to the ground by fog

Smolensk-Severny is a joint-based airfield, that is, it receives both military and passenger ships. It is located 3 km north of the Smolensk railway station. Until 2009, the 103rd Guards Krasnoselsky Red Banner Military Transport Aviation Regiment was stationed here. In October last year, the regiment was disbanded. In December, the administration of the Smolensk region began to develop a concept for the use of the airfield for civilian purposes. Defense Minister Serdyukov approved the idea.
On Saturday morning, the Tu-154 tried to land four times in order to land on the runway of the Smolensk airport. At the time of landing, visibility, according to the Hydrometeorological Center, ranged from 200 to 500 meters. “These are pretty bad conditions for takeoffs and landings – on the verge of lows even at the best airports,” forecasters said. Under such weather conditions, everything depends on the navigation equipment available at the airport.
Lieutenant-General Sergey Razygraev, Deputy Commander of the Air Force for Air Defense, believes that the crash of the presidential aircraft is not related to the quality of the airfield: “The Severny airfield is first class, and I don’t think that this disaster is somehow connected with it,” the general said in an interview. radio station "Echo of Moscow".

"God forbid I be wrong"

What happened? The New Times turned to professional pilots for an answer.
“The requirements for a safe landing for this aircraft correspond to ICAO category II: visibility from top to bottom is 30 meters and forward is 350 meters,” test pilot Yevgeny Pankevich told The New Times. Visibility is unstable in fog. In order to land on the second category of ICAO, the airfield must be equipped with a special lighting system - approach lights and lights on the runway, the so-called "light carpet". Appropriate radio equipment must be available. The four approaches that the pilot made may be due to the fact that the ground equipment was not up to standard. Any landing is connected with the fact that you need to see it with your eyes (except for category III ICAO, in which the plane lands automatically). And to see it, there must be lights on the strip. Concrete should glow for 800 meters. Approach lights - be high intensity and arranged in sequence. Whether it was there or not is unknown. But even if it was, the crew continues the approach to the decision-making height, in this case it is 30 meters above the surface (at the time of the tragedy, the surface was not the ground, but the tops of the trees). The commander must see these lights and, by the way they are located, understand that the aircraft is in a landing position. If this is not the case, he must immediately go to the second round. Three times the pilot did this, on the fourth time he fell below the altitude at which it is necessary to go around. Apparently, he hoped that he would see the strip and did not see it. If so, then we are dealing with a violation of the meteorological minimum by the crew.”
Similar assumptions were made in an interview with The New Times by another pilot who flew a Tu-154 for 9 years (he commented on condition of anonymity): “The Tu-154 has no problems landing under such conditions; it all depends on the equipment of the airport. The Tu-154 may well come in for a landing according to the ICAO category II: 30 meters per 350 meters of visibility. But this category implies the presence of a course-glide path system that guides the aircraft both in height and in direction. In all likelihood, there was no course-glide path system at this airfield. This means that the landing was carried out using two radio compasses. And then the visibility minimum is very high: from the ground to the lower edges of the clouds there should be 120 meters (vertical visibility) and 1500 meters of horizontal visibility. Since there was fog in Smolensk, visibility was less than 1000 meters. The plane was landing for the first time, did not hit the runway, did not see the runway, went to the second round, to the third, and on the fourth time there was a tragedy. I do not think that the crew is suicidal, but, in all likelihood, they were ordered to land at all costs. Foreign pilots, when they fly to Russia, often follow the minimum accepted in their company, which differs from ours. And here it was probably the same: a foreigner was flying, especially the presidential crew, so the dispatcher, in principle, could say that the weather was below the minimum, but the Poles could answer - we are landing anyway. Of course, the dispatcher corrected them whenever possible. God forbid that I be wrong, but the commander of the ship is to blame for everything.

The New Times from the scene:
“The airfield is surrounded by a concrete fence. The cordon is very serious. There is a residential building very close by, but it looks empty,” says local journalist Olesya Tomasheva. A man who works at a car dealership located near Severny told her that he saw the presidential plane crash through the window: “I immediately realized that the plane was falling. He was flying heavily banked to the left and nose to the ground. Then there was cotton and a glow. Then nothing could be seen behind the fog. Polish journalists are very interested in the length of the runway on the Severny, whether it matches the one that Polish pilots are used to. “But I don't think there can be any claims against the airfield. It is generally military and closed, and basically only VIP guests land there. Literally on Wednesday, a plane with Putin on board landed here, and everything was in order, ”said Tomasheva. In the afternoon, she added, the first flowers were brought to the site of the tragedy - carnations, which were placed by a representative of the Polish delegation to the concrete fence.