All indications are that the air crash on Saturday that killed President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and dozens of other Polish dignitaries was the result of a flawed decision to land in extremely bad weather, Obama administration officials say.
Official reports reaching Washington support media accounts that Kaczynski had a reputation for pressuring pilots to take unnecessary risks, according to a U.S. national-security official. One notable instance occurred during Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, when the Polish president traveled to the former Soviet republic and allegedly badgered his pilot to fly to the capital, Tbilisi, despite the pilot's insistence that it was too dangerous. After the pilot refused and diverted the plane to the neighboring republic of Azerbaijan, Kaczynski had to travel to overland to his destination. According to The Guardian, initial steps were taken to put the pilot on trial for disobeying orders, but prosecutors threw out the case. The pilot struggled with depression in the wake of the incident, according to The New York Times.
Before Saturday's crash, air-traffic controllers repeatedly advised the Polish delegation's Russian-made Tupolev-154 aircraft to divert to another airport rather than land at its scheduled destination, an airfield near the Russian city of Smolensk. Heavy fog there was causing extremely poor visibility. The pilots nevertheless attempted to land, and they were warned just before the crash that the plane was flying too low, Russian investigators say.
AdvertisementAlthough the Tu-154 has a checkered safety record, the plane that crashed had been recently overhauled, and investigators report no signs so far that it was encountering any mechanical problems.
The crash could have become a source of conspiracy theories and international tensions, given the long history of troubles between Poland and Russia. In fact, Kaczynski and his entourage were en route to a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of one of the bloodiest examples: the mass execution by Soviet forces of an estimated 22,000 Poles at the Katyn forest. In the wake of the crash, however, most Poles seem to have accepted that it was likely a result of pilot error. Polish spokesmen are even praising Russia's response to the disaster and predicting that it could ultimately lead to better ties between Warsaw and Moscow.
