INVESTIGATORS SAY two passengers were in the cockpit of the aircraft carrying Polish president Lech Kaczynski before it crashed in western Russia last month, fuelling speculation that the crew may have been pressured to land at fog-bound Smolensk airport.
Mr Kaczynski was killed on April 10th along with his wife and 94 other people, including top political, military and financial figures, as they flew to a commemoration ceremony for 22,000 Polish officers murdered by the Soviet secret police at Katyn in April 1940.
Russian air traffic controllers say they urged the crew of the president’s Tupolev Tu-154 to divert to another airport because the fog at Smolensk was too thick for them to land.
Polish media have suggested that Mr Kaczynski may have ordered the pilot to land despite the bad weather. He personally insisted on visiting Katyn after he had not initially been invited by Russia’s leaders, of whom he was fiercely critical. He also publicly upbraided one of his pilots for “cowardice” in 2008 when he refused to land in Georgia during its brief war with Russia.
“It has been established that in the cockpit there were individuals who were not members of the crew,” said Tatyana Anodina, head of Russia’s inter-state aviation committee.
She said two passengers had been heard on the cockpit voice recorders, only one of whom had been identified. She declined to name him, but Polish reports said it was Gen Andrzej Blasik, the commander of Poland’s air force. The other voice heard is expected to be identified by Polish investigators.
Ms Anodina also said the door of the cockpit was open at the time of the failed landing, which is against normal aircraft procedure.
Though the cause of the crash has not been officially decided, Russian investigators ruled out a terror attack, technical failure or an explosion.
Edmund Klich, a Polish air accident investigator who has been helping the Russian team, played down the possible role of the passengers in the disaster, saying they were heard in the cockpit 16-20 minutes before the crash.
Alexei Morozov, the head of the Russian committee’s technical team, said the crew of a Polish aircraft that had landed safely at Smolensk earlier on April 10th had told the president’s flight crew that visibility was very poor. “The air traffic controller . . . twice warned the crew that there was fog at the airport, visibility was 400 metres and the conditions were not appropriate to receive the plane,” Mr Morozov said.
He said the aircraft crashed into a ravine some 15 metres below the level of the nearby runway, a factor that may have confused the crew or their instruments.
An automated cockpit voice twice warned of “terrain ahead” and urged the crew to “pull up” about 18 seconds before the crash, Mr Morozov said.
About five seconds before the jet hit a tree in the ravine, the captain switched off the autopilot and started to bank around for a second attempt to land.
