MAC and Donald

Prime Minister Donald Tusk became a political victim of the report of the Interstate Aviation Committee on the crash of the Polish presidential plane

Last Friday, January 14, Novaya published materials related to the report of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) on the results of the investigation into the crash of the Polish presidential plane in Smolensk on April 10 last year - ...

Last Friday, January 14, Novaya published materials related to the report of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) on the results of the investigation into the crash of the Polish presidential plane in Smolensk on April 10 last year, including excerpts from the report itself. In today's issue, a well-known Polish journalist presents his views on the content of the report and the impact of its publication on the political life of Poland, who has been investigating its circumstances since the disaster.

The first soundings of public opinion show that every second Pole believes that the Russian document is biased. Why did it happen?

1. Cold analysis shows: in connection with the flight of Polish President Lech Kaczynski on April 10 to Smolensk, a huge number of mistakes were made. The lion's share falls on the Polish side - this coincides with the views of Prime Minister Tusk, the Polish representative accredited to the IAC, Colonel Edmund Klich and Minister of the Interior Jerzy Miller, who simultaneously heads the Polish commission to investigate the causes of the disaster. By the way, the latter said that the report of his commission would be much more critical of the actions of the Polish side than the report of the IAC.

And rightly so. Because it was we who sent our own president's plane to the old military airfield, without a Russian navigator, without an accurate weather forecast, without up-to-date flight maps. The landing attempt took place in terrible weather conditions, under which there was no question of any landing at all - the plane had to turn around and fly back or to another airfield.

We now know that the "elite" 36th Air Regiment, responsible for air support for the highest officials of the Polish state, was not at all so elite. It was flown by young pilots with little experience. On the day of the disaster, only three pilots were serving in the 36th regiment, trained to be commanders of the Tu-154 M crew, and two trained to be co-pilots! All about the same age, about the same level of flight experience.

There was no training on electronic simulators - but only with their help you can learn cool and correct behavior in the event of, say, an engine fire or cabin depressurization.

There were strange orders in the elite regiment. It follows from the IAC report, for example, that the first of the Polish aircraft, the Yak-40, landed at the Severny airport without receiving the consent of the air traffic controllers.

And the preparation for the flight of the president? Vitebsk was chosen as one of the alternate airfields. Everything would be fine, but the airfield did not function that day. It is surprising that no one in Poland noticed this.

I do not want to talk about possible errors in pilotage. I will refer only to the words of Colonel Klich: "Pilots are a product of the system." The trouble begins at the stage of training, when there is a tacit consent of leaders to the departure of subordinates from instructions and procedures. And they, as you know, are written in blood in aviation.

The people responsible for the situation in the Air Force must repent. Moreover, in January 2008, a CASA military plane crashed over the airfield in Miroslavets. Then 20 people died, among whom were an aviation general, six colonels and six majors. Even then they swore: "Never again!" And what from this? The Tupolev and CASA disasters look remarkably similar in many respects.

2. Knowing all this, I must still admit that the IAC report disappointed me. Such reports should, based only on facts, accurately answer the questions that led to the disaster in order to avoid such in the future. IAC did not cope with this task, in my opinion.

Let's take, for example, the thesis that pressure was put on the crew of the aircraft. I've been hearing about this since April 10 last year. But where is the evidence? Could this be the psychological analysis of the personality of the deceased commander of the ship? Russian experts say he was a conformist. Polish experts - what was not. So is this evidence or not?

I carefully reviewed the transcript of the conversations in the cockpit and did not find any evidence in it that General Andrzej Blasik was putting pressure on someone. Although I intuitively understand that his presence in the cockpit did not contribute to the normal work of the crew. However, there should be no place for "intuition" in the IAC report. It should contain only the hard facts.

And such facts exist. In accordance with the Polish instruction Head (for flights with state VIPs), unauthorized persons may be in the cockpit. True, only with the consent of the ship's commander. I did not hear such an agreement in the recording. Therefore, I believe that the instruction was violated. This is a concrete fact. At the same time, the assumption that Blasik's "silence" was a "form of pressure" on the crew is not a concrete fact. From here it is a stone's throw to the interpretation of some media that "the drunken general forced the pilots to land."

3. Instead of speculation and assumptions, I would like to find in the IAC report, for example, an accurate analysis of what happened at the control tower of the Severny airfield. There were at least five people there. Including Colonel Nikolai Krasnokutsky, the former commander of the military transport aviation regiment, which was based at the Smolensk airfield until mid-October 2009. I wonder: did his presence help the air traffic controllers who controlled the flight to fulfill their duties? Polish experts analyzed the recording of negotiations at the flight control point and are sure that Krasnokutsky himself spoke with the crew of the Il-76 (which landed before the presidential plane) and with the crew of the Tu-154. On the basis of what rights did he take the microphone in his hands?

According to Polish experts, the most experienced of the Russian air traffic controllers, Pavel Plyusnin, was categorically against the landing of the Tupolev. (You can imagine what he was going through after, shortly before the landing approach of the presidential Tu, first a Polish Yak-40 landed without permission, and then a Russian Il-76 almost caught its wing on the ground during landing.)

However, Colonel Krasnokutsky - as evidenced by the record - said: "We are leading ( Tu-154 . - P. R. ) to a height of 100 meters, without talking." That's an order? On what basis does an outsider give an order to controllers?

IAC experts came to the conclusion that everything that happened in the control tower did not affect the development of the disaster. Even if this is so, why was nothing said about this in the report at all?

Another mystery that the MAK avoids concerns radar readings. During the entire time, the controller tells the crew that he is on the glide path and is on a normal course. How is this possible, if at first the Tupolev was significantly above the line of descent, and in the final stage - in a hollow, below the level of the runway! However, the radar showed that everything was normal. This also did not affect the development of a catastrophic situation?

The IAC does not explain whether it is true (Polish experts came to this conclusion) that the landing of the Yak-40 and Il-76 aircraft took place in a situation below permissible weather conditions. He does not explain, although he should, because even from the Russian report it follows that something was wrong with cooperation with the weather station. At 9.36 Plyusnin calls the station: “Meteo ... meteo. Why are you silent ... The fog is falling. But this is the moment when the IL-76 makes its second attempt to land!

MAC does not answer a few more important questions. At least why the Polish crew did not have modern maps for approaching the Severny airport. Because the Polish embassy overslept? Or did the Russian Foreign Ministry not respond in time?

There is no answer to the question why the Polish crew flew without a Russian navigator. The IAC limited itself to the statement that "the Polish side refused it." Since 2009, Polish crews have been flying to Severny without an escort navigator, but this is contrary to established procedures. What, Poland did not have money for this? Or did the Russians not have navigators? Maybe there was an unspoken agreement: you have no money, we have no people, we will pretend that everything is OK?

4. The IAC report was undoubtedly a blow to Tusk. The prime minister spent months convincing public opinion that cooperation with Russia in investigating the causes of the disaster was developing exemplarily. Even before the announcement of the report, he admitted that most of the blame lies with the Polish side. However, when he read the text of the report, sent in advance for review, he said: "This document cannot be accepted." Despite this, the IAC ignored 148 pages of comments provided to it by Polish experts and declared that this document was final.

Tusk was in a bad situation. He is opposed by the leader of the largest opposition party, Yaroslav Kaczynski, who lost his twin brother in the crash. Many of his supporters were deeply convinced from the very beginning that there had been an attempt on the president's life near Smolensk and that the Russians would do everything to hide it.

The problem is aggravated by the fact that half of the Poles, according to opinion polls, consider the IAC report to be biased. It is only a step away from this situation to accuse the prime minister of putting the truth about the catastrophe in Smolensk on the altar of the development of Russian-Polish relations.

PS Records of negotiations between Russian controllers of the Severny airfield, to which the author of the publication refers, were made public yesterday at a press conference by Polish Interior Minister Jerzy Miller.