Poland: Russian errors contribute to President's plane crash
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Russian flight controllers in Smolensk committed numerous errors which contributed to the April 10 crash of a Polish presidential Tupolev near the city's military airfield, a Polish commission investigating the disaster said Tuesday.
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Poland's Interior Minister Jerzy Miller (R2) and members of a Polish committee investigating the causes of the April Smolensk plane crash listen to a presentation during a news conference at the Prime Minister's Chancellery in Warsaw January 18, 2011. Investigation found that mistakes made by Russian ground controllers contributed to the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others on board in Smolensk, western Russia, Miller said Tuesday. [Xinhua] |
A recent report on the accident by a Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Commission (IAC) was questioned by Poland on grounds that it washed Russia of co-responsibility for the crash.
According to the Russian report, the crash occurred when Polish crew decided to land in Smolensk despite bad weather and flight controller orders to seek another landing place.
The Russian report put the blame for the crash on "pilot error" but Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last week that the document was "incomplete" and had failed to analyze the role of Russian air traffic control in the disaster.
According to the Polish commission under Interior Minister Jerzy Miller, the Smolensk flight control team was acting under pressure and gave the Polish flight insufficient support.
Miller's commission also publicized some of its documentation in the case and fragments of transcripts of Smolensk flight controller conversations immediately prior to the crash.
"We want to show that Poland's comments to the IAC report were well-founded," Miller said, cited by the PAP news agency.
In a presentation in the prime minister's chancellery, Miller's commission also showed simulations of the accident plane's landing approach suggesting that the Russian flight controllers allowed the Polish aircraft to descend too low.
Commenting the Russians' claims that Poland airforce commander Andrzej Blasik had exerted pressure on the plane's crew to land in Smolensk, Miller said that Blasik had been a passenger on the plane and should not have been mentioned in the report.
Miller said his commission is to publish a report of its findings in February constructed similarly to the IAC document.
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