Polish President and Army Chief of Staff dead

[Carsten Wiethoff]

The russian Kommersant newspaper has a more fleshed out version of the events in the cockpit (russian original here: http://kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1372037&NodesID=6) (Google translation)

I quote a partial english translation from http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/41565...ost5704483:

"According to Russian experts, the main cause of the accident were the mistakes of the Polish pilots who committed them when landing. The first was to start the approach to inaccurate navigation system, a/c in autopilot mode, which was categorically wrong. Set the machine to the beginning of the glide path, for which, according to his calculations, aircraft had to descent, the commander set the autopilot V mode to descent speed of 4 m / s and started landing, assuming that at these parameters chassis touch the ground at the beginning of the strip. Meanwhile, the navigator was checking the altitude of the aircraft by radio altimeter - a device which determines the distance to the ground by radio signal reflected from it. Fatal role in the crash, according to experts, played a rather flat and a long valley with depth of about 40 m, located across the glide path, and the inexperience of the navigator. When the plane was flying above the bottom of the valley and the ground began to go down, navigator panicked and began to constantly tell the commander that they are above the glide path and do not descent. The commander, in turn, trusted his subordinate and increased - doubled - the vertical rate of descent - up to 8 m / sec. Valley under the glide path in the meantime was over, replaced by a prolonged rise of the hill, and the pilots forgot to increase the vertical velocity.

The crew, according to experts, tired as soon as possible to catch a glimpse under the fog to see the ground - but the ground, meanwhile, rushed towards them. To get the crew out of the fast descent, the ATC was shouting the pilots "one hundred first, the horizon!!" (101-flight number, immediately stop the decline and change in level flight .-" editior "), and the system TAWS, was heard in the audio recording of the cockpit with the phrase" Pull up ! ". However, the crew was busy with a visual search of ground and no one has listened. They pulled up only after seeing the birch straight ahead, but it was already too late.

It should be noted that the Polish side does not agree with this position. According to Polish experts, the ATC command "One hundred first horizon!" sounded too late, when the plane had dropped below one hundred meters decision height. Russian experts suggest, however, that the ATC simply could not keep track of the radar screen label due to too great rate of descent of the aircraft."