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The original:
http://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/news-katastro ... 98,nPack,1#
and translated into English:
https://translate.googleusercontent.com ... =undefined
Worth a click
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/ ... UZ20150407
Tue Apr 7, 2015 8:52am EDT
In the minutes before a 2010 plane crash that killed Poland's president,
members of the president's entourage urged the crew to land despite thick fog,
according to what a radio station said was a leaked transcript of cockpit conversations.
In the transcript,
the crew on several occasions ask people to be quiet or to leave the cockpit,
and conversations suggest people in or around the cockpit were drinking beer,
though there is no indication the crew themselves consumed alcohol.
A spokesman for the Warsaw main military prosecutor's office, which is conducting the investigation into the crash, said the transcript was inaccurate in several places,
but did not specify which parts were wrong.
The spokesman, Major Marcin Maksjan, also said that Polish tests had previously shown that neither crew members nor other people referred to in the leaked transcript were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash.
The radio station, RMF FM, said the transcript was from the cockpit voice recorder recovered from the aircraft wreckage soon after the crash.
It said Polish investigators last year used new techniques to decipher parts of the recording provided to them by Russian authorities,
which were of such poor quality that they had previously been unintelligible.
According to the transcript,
the crew were worried about reports of thick fog at the airport,
and discussed turning back or diverting,
but came under pressure to keep going so the president would not have to cancel his engagement.
The radio station said the head of diplomatic protocol in the Polish foreign ministry told the captain: "We will try until we make it"
roughly 15 minutes before the crash.
Polish air force commander-in-chief Andrzej Blasik,
travelling on the plane as a passenger, was in the cockpit and told the pilots 41 seconds before the crash:
"You'll make it easily," according to the transcript.
As the captain and crew tried to decide whether to land, they were distracted
by people in or around the cockpit, according to the transcript.
The transcript cites a person in the cockpit or in its immediate proximity asking someone: "What is it?".
The other person replies: "Beer, and you are not drinking?".
Two minutes later a stewardess asks somebody in or near the cockpit: "Will you drink?". The person replies: "Yeees".
The crash happened as the president and his entourage were on their way to a ceremony to commemorate the Katyn massacre, when the Soviet Union's secret police killed thousands of Polish officers in a forest in western Russia in 1940.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/a ... -thick-fogPoland’s military prosecutor’s office said it would investigate how the transcript was leaked to the press. The new transcript, according to the prosecutor’s office, was made using a better-quality version of the material collected in Moscow, which still holds the recorders and the plane’s wreckage.
“RMF is a top radio station,” a defence industry source with intimate knowledge of Polish politics told the Guardian.
New information reported by local radio station RMF FM on Tuesday suggests the two Polish pilots in command of the Polish Air Force plane were placed under duress by senior officials on board urging them to attempt to land in treacherous conditions,
overruling on-board warning systems.
Its release comes just days after Polish prosecutors said they would press charges against two Russian air traffic controllers involved in guiding the aircraft to its intended runway in Smolensk.
Various members of Polish society, including nationalist right-wing Poles, continue to promote theories such as the crash being the result of a political assassination, or allege that the blame lies with Russian officials. Mr Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw, the current chairman of Law and Justice, has long sought to blame Moscow for the crash.