Land the plane, Polish dignitaries told pilots
Leaked recordings from 2010 may finally put to rest idea Russians were behind crash
For Poland, it was a tragedy almost beyond belief.
Five years ago, a plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other Polish dignitaries crashed in heavy fog in the forests of western Russia. The plane was heading to the Katyn Massacre site to commemorate 22,000 Polish officers murdered by the Soviets in 1940.
Leaked recordings from the crash, made public this week, indicate the pilots were pressured by the highranking passengers to land the plane — at all costs.
The new evidence could finally put to rest the conspiracy theory that the Russians were behind the April 10, 2010, crash.
A transcript of the final moments of what went on in the cockpit of the Polish air force plane that went down near Smolensk, Russia, was obtained by Polish radio station RMF FM.
The leaked transcripts indicate there were unauthorized passengers coming in and out of the cockpit, urging the pilots to ignore the weather and to land the plane. The pilots were hesitant, preferring to divert or land at another airport.
The pilots would have faced, and felt, intense political and emotional pressure to land the plane so that Kaczynski, his wife, Maria, 12 members of parliament and a host of other dignitaries on board could make the 70th anniversary of the Katyn memorial. In the end, 96 died when the plane crash landed in the Russian forest.
The radio station notes it was the head of the Polish air force, Andrzej Błasik, who told the pilots “you’ll make it easily,” about 41 seconds before the crash, reported The Guardian. Moments before that, another official was heard telling the pilots to keep trying “until we make it.”
The transcript also indicates alcohol was being served. A flight attendant can be heard asking if passengers wanted beer, reported the Rus- sian news service RT.
Polish officials told RT there are problems with the interpretations of the transcripts and they refuse to comment any further.
The evidence obtained by the radio station reveals little new information but seems to back up what crash investigators had discovered: pilot error was to blame, said Randall Hansen, the director of the Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies at the Munk Centre of Global Affairs.
“What it seems to suggest is that military command was keen to get a high-level delegation on the ground and that political imperative took precedence over safety. That in some ways doesn’t seem overly surprising,” Hansen said.
Revelations of the transcripts have come at a pivotal time in Poland. Not only is it the fifth anniversary of the crash on Friday, but the country is in the middle of a general election. As one Polish political operative put it, the news could either blow over or act as a small explosion in the campaign.
Polish and Russian investigators came to the conclusion the crash appears to have largely happened because of pilot error, not a mechanical problem with the plane or, as some had believed, an explosion.