AIR CRASH INVESTIGATION

SMOLENSK AIRPLANE CRASH

Abstract: The article examines the case of the air disaster from Smolensk where the entire
Polish elite died in an air crash. The article analyses the conditions in which the disaster took
place, the causes and the conclusions resulting from the accident. The study supports the fact that
the poor relationship between civilians and military, the “psychological pressure” and also the
meteo conditions are the main factors that induced the failure. To this extent, the composition
highlights some suggestions which come out from the case, that should be taken in consideration
and put into practice in order to avoid air crashes to happen again.
Keywords: Smolensk air crash, Civ-Mil relations.

INTRODUCTION

Smolensk name is significant in Polish history because it is close to the place where
Stalin’s secret police, shot 22.000 Polish officers and intellectuals. They were executed in
1940. The massacre was an enduring symbol of Poland’s suffering at Soviet hands, and
Lech Kaczyński had been flying in to commemorate it.
On the 10th of April 2010, the plane in which there was the president of Poland, his
wife, members of the Government and commanders of the Armed Forces, crashed a few
hundred metres short of the runway, causing the death of all 96 people aboard.
The aircraft which was supposed to get them to Smolensk was a Tupolev Tu-154 with
no technical issues detected after the impact.

2. HYPOTHESIS REGARDING THE DISASTER

TUPOLEV TU-154 AIRCRAFT

Tupolev Tu-154 is a plane created in U.R.S.S. in the middle of ‘60’s.It was made for
medium distances and it flew over the 6th part of the world and carried more than a half
of the Aeroflot (the biggest airline in Russia). It’s first flight was on 4th of October 1968,
49 years ago. With a cruising speed of 900 kilometres per hour (560 mph) the Tu-154 is
one of the fastest civilian aircraft in use and has a range of 5,280 kilometres.
Until the 10th of april 2010, the plane was involved in 66 serious accidents, 37 of them
being ended with deaths.
 FIG. 1. Tupolev TU-154

FIG. 2. Tupolev TU-154 Inside view

Speculations in mass media have been in circulation since the day of the crash. A
general idea was that the aircrash was not induced by the meteo conditions, but it was a
political assasination, an act of war againt Poland. The Poland population couldn’t believe
the fact that they lost the Polish elite and they thougt that only a political execution is
responsible for that. Kaczynski’s 66 years old twin brother, Jaroslaw, has never let go of
his conviction that the tragedy was the result of Kremlin sabotage, so he initiated a new
investigation in order to find out the real reason of his brother’s death. The Polish defence
minister, Antoni Macierewicz agreed the re-examination of the case because they found
out that an explosion could be a possible cause, saying that the plane had disintegrated
above ground before crashing: “There is no doubt that these circumstances are not only a
sufficient reason, but one that makes it compulsory to re-examinate this tragedy”1.
But the Law and Justice government will not allow political pragmatism to get in the
way. The Polish government accuses Russia of blocking its attempts to carry out a full

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investigation, by failing to give it access to two air traffic controllers’ testimonies, and to
hand over the black box flight recorders and wreckage. 
“I think that if Russia has not shared credible information for years, if Russia
manipulates the investigations, does not return the wreck, they put suspicion on
themselves. When someone acts like this it means they have something to hide.”2
Waszczykowski added.
Macierewicz, deputy leader of Law and Justice, has cast himself as the main
champion of the sabotage theory. He seemed to hint for the first time at a clear Russian
reason for downing the plane-“ Putin is fully responsible for this tragedy”, he told the
European parliament.
But, these all were just theories, speculations, which were not demonstrated. The only
demonstrated hypothesis concerning the disaster, is the pilot error based on the meteo
conditions.
English is the international language of civil aviation, but the Smolensk airport being
a military one, controllers here speak only Russian. Planes don’t normally land at
Smolensk, however for the Polish delegation it has been made an exception considering
the fact that it was the closest runway to the memorial. The captain of the crew was the
single one who knew Russian so he tried to talk with the ATC. It was his duty to handle
the communication with the tower. The ATC send them information regarding the
temperature, the pression, the fog, the visibility. The Smolensk base is not the best
technological equipped airfield in their country ; it doesn’t have the equipment needed for
a radio guided landing.
Even if the fog was so dense that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face or
the person standing next to you, the captain of the crew took the decision to continue their
approach , even if the ATC told him that they don’t have landing conditions. From their
flying experience, the crew knew that fog can be an ‘even’-one minute it can be very
dense, but 10 or 15 minutes later, the wind can clear it. But as they got closer, the fog got
even thicker. Unfortunetly, the crew couldn’t handle the aircraft, they crushed a tree and
here was the biggest air disaster ended with 96 corps.

3. INITIAL INVESTIGATION

Within hours of the crash, it was established a commission in order to investigate the
case. The procedures had to be supervised by Vladimir Putin.
There were found two flight recorders where the disaster took place: the cockpit voice
recorder and the flight data recorder. They found out that the cockpit voice recordings
confirmed that the crew attempted to land against the advice of the Air Traffic
Controllers.
On the day after the crash, investigators said they had reviewed the flight recorders,
and confirmed that there were no technical problems with the airplane.
The investigators tried to search for human remains but it was almost impossible
because the ground was dug to a depth of one meter.

4. CAUSES

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 The MAK report found a ‘immediate cause’. They found out that the main cause of
the air crash was the fact that the crew was not capable to take a quick decision to proceed
to an alternate airport despite being warned multiple times of the poor weather conditions
at Smolensk. In my opinion this theory is plausible because the indicators of fuel didn’t
show that they were running out of fuel so they could continue their flight up to the
closest airport. But, Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs in
Warsaw, believes the reason for the crash is far more prosaic. He says: “Lech
Kaczyński’s ratings were down. He was flying to Smolensk to open his election
campaign. He was determined to be on time. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for
diverting the plane. The media had made a joke of Kaczyński’s planes always breaking
down.”
Another cause of the accident is considered to be the presence in the cockpit of the
Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Air Force, which placed extreme stress and
"psychological pressure" on the Captain to "continue descent in conditions of unjustified
risk with a dominating aim of landing at any means."

At 06:14:15(about 28 minutes before scheduled timme of arrival) the cockpit received

from Minsk Control information about weather conditions at Smolensk North aerodrome,
regarding ”Polish Air Force one zero one, for information, at zero six one one
SMOLENSK visibility:four zero metres, fog”. Following the radio contact withe the
Aerodrome controller at 06:24:32, the aircraft received a next message regarding the
weather conditions at Smolensk North aerodrome, reading: „Papa Lima Foxtrot one two
zero one, Korsaz, fog, visibility four hundred metres”, and advise that there were no
weather conditions for landing. At 06:26:18, the Tu-154M the aircraft’s commmander
shared the information about unfavourable weather conditions at Smolensk with the
diplomatic protocol director, quote:”Fog has appeared just now and under the existing
conditions we cannot make it. But, the pilot had to respect the order of the president and
He took in consideration the fact that the president would have got angry if he had
changed the airport, so he decided to approach.

Tabel.2.- Prognoses for alternative airports

 MOSCOW MINSK
07:00-09:00 07:00-09:00
Visibility 3000m >10 000 m
Cloud cover 5-7/8 5-7/8
Cloud base 210m 450m
Weather phenomena Mist Nil
Wind direction Changeable, 3m/s 5m/s
Velocity

The Terminal Aerodrome Forecast(TAF) prognoses for airports in Moscow and

Minsk, complied on Friday, 09.04.2010 before 17:00 hours and transmitted to all airports
via the Aeronautical Fixed Telecomunication Network(available to Yak-40 and Tu-154M
before thier departure from Warszawa):

5. REACTIONS

In Poland, people were shocked when they heard the bad news. All the concerts were
cancelled, even the sport competitions and it was declared one week of national
mourning. When hearing the news, all the people gathered at the Presidential Palace with
flowers and candles in order to pray for their president.
In Russia, the president Dimitri Medvedev and the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
expressed their regret and condolences and established the 12th of April 2010 as a
national day of mourning.
At least 96 countries, 13 international organizations and several other entities
expressed their regret concerning the tragedy.

6. CONCLUSIONS

One conclusion that is expressed from the Smolensk air disaster is the fact that the civil-
military co-ordination will have to improve, in order to establish a good relationship
between the two categories, because, after all, both of them have the same purpose: to
accomplish successfully the missions. Based on the events which happened until the air
crash to take place, which were unfavourable for landing-the crew was a civilian one and
not only the airport but also the Air Traffic Controller was military(here controllers only
speak Russian, so the pilot had to handle the communication with the tower even if he
was not addicted to Russian); a conclusion that comes out is the fact that there are
contradictions between civilians and military. Of course there always have been since
ages, as Huntington, Harvard professor, with high influence in political backgrounds,
author of many books and articles regarding the problems between civilians and military,
considers: “The army must obey the Law, must remain apolitical and must respect the
civilian authority. Otherwise, civilians must respect the special role of the army in
society.” In contrast, Morris Janowitz considers that the army adapts to society and the
two categories had to intertwine in order to exclude the hypothesis of creating a contrast
of values and perceptions between them. To this extent, a new decision was taken to
further develop the relevant structures at the strategic level, namely to merge the relevant
civilian and defence directorates in the Council secretariat with the Civ-Mil Cell to form a
new Crisis Management and Planning Departmeny. This department now operated as an
integrated structure for strategic planning of CSDP policy and capability issues. On this
wise, a better relationship and a well communication and co-ordination will improve the
missions in order to finish them with complete success.
Another conclusion that comes out from the disaster is that the psychological factors are
very important for the persons that are supposed to accomplish any kind of activity, more
important, those who have to succeed in a mission, especially one which involves risks,
as landing in our case. The presence in the cockpit of the Commander-in-Chief made the
crew feel pressured and nervous. It placed extreme stress and “psychological pressure” on
the Captain to “continue descent in conditions of unjustified risk with a dominating aim
of landing at any means.” The external factors are important concerning motivation. Even
if there was the most experienced civilian crew and they had intrinsic motivation, all they
got from the exterior side was negative motivation which generated stress and gave birth
to failure. The psychology itself represents the stress as a factor which decreases the
concentration and induces negative affective states as fear, for instance. In such manner,
if the concentration drops, people is not capable to complete the mission because the
reproductive capacity of the memory diminishes and so the attention. Also the qualities of
will decrease, such as the calm in extreme situations and also the courage-the pilot
couldn’t take the decision of going to an alternative airport despite being warned multiple
times of the poor weather conditions at Smolensk, because he was sure the president will
not agree( at 06:30, the diplomatic protocol director entered the cockpit saying that there
was no decisions from the president concerning what to do next:” As for now, no decision
from the president about what we do next”). So, the pilot had not enough courage to
confront with the situation because he was afraid of the president opinion.

REFERENCES
Books:
[1]Manual „Avioane orbitale”-F. Zaganescu, seria- Tehnica la zi
[2]Handbook on CSDP-Jochen Rehrl and Hans-Bernhard Weisserth
Sites:
[3] http://www.dailymotion.com/aircrashdisaster
[4] https://twitter.com/aircrash_
[5] https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/air-crash-disaster
[6] https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidentul_aviatic_de_la_Smolensk_din_2010
[7]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/07/smolensk-plane-crash-lech-kaczynski-poland-russia