Part of Polish gov members including president probably dead in plane crash

[agni]

The only thing what i can recognise from video (link provided by Possibility of Being earlier in this thread), except those 2 guys in front there is 'kill them all' in russian - shouted by someone from distance.

Hi Ranger,

As far as 'kill them all", what time was it on the video ? I fail to hear it.

[quote author=ranger]
There is a theory that they were russian police officers trying to keep everyone away from the crash site. Some people claim that they can hear there some words in polish also but i dont hear any.[/quote]

That's an impression I get after watching the video.

At first when I saw youtube edit, where subtitle say: "do not kill us!", I thought I've heard the same in Polish.
Later viewing video without subtitles _http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcxt1j_yyyyy-yyyyyyy_news
I think I rather can hear "Get out of here" in Russian.

Also, on youtube edit subtitle say: "Give me the gun", I rather can hear: "over here, *punk* !" (I've used *punk* for the lack of translating rus. word "paskuda?")

Visual suggestion at work, perhaps, when seen along with subtitles ? It got me the first time.

 

[ranger]

Its about 0:50, well... I'm not sure now ,I did watch another version and it sounds more like "Get out of here" indeed.
Subtitles doesnt help at all, I have seen many different translations and I must admit people are ....very creative here.

 

[D69]

well , this vid is really weird , but I don't know what to think about it. On the day the crash occured , this video was released in polish TV stations with different background sounds or without words , which means they got it very early.
There was a siren in a background but i don't recall any voices. I might be wrong thou , maybe there were voices but i didn't hear it because of background noise in my home

 

[Vulcan59]

Thinking more about how this crash could have happened; one way was for the controller to pass the wrong pressure setting for the altimeter as I described here. The pilot wouldn't know any better unless he was checking his altitude as he passed certain markers, like the NDB antenna, for example. Since on an NDB approach, there usually is only one marker for height check purposes, once the pilot passed that marker, there would be no further checks available. It would be easier if I had the actual approach plate flown so that I could work out the exact altitudes.

So a difference of only 3 hectopascals is equivalent to approximately 90ft, which means to say that the altimeter would be over-reading (the aircraft is lower than what is shown on the altimeter) and coupled with the cold weather altimeter errors, that would have got the aircraft too low causing it to hit an obstacle on approach. The pressure setting for the altimeter passed to the aircraft would be recorded but since this is a Russian military airfield, what are the odds that we will get to hear it?

 

[Possibility of Being]

Thinking more about how this crash could have happened; one way was for the controller to pass the wrong pressure setting for the altimeter as I described here. The pilot wouldn't know any better unless he was checking his altitude as he passed certain markers, like the NDB antenna, for example. Since on an NDB approach, there usually is only one marker for height check purposes, once the pilot passed that marker, there would be no further checks available. It would be easier if I had the actual approach plate flown so that I could work out the exact altitudes.

Don't know if it shows the current state since the chart is from 2005 but it's here. Hope you can decipher Russian. If not, call for help :)

So a difference of only 3 hectopascals is equivalent to approximately 90ft, which means to say that the altimeter would be over-reading (the aircraft is lower than what is shown on the altimeter) and coupled with the cold weather altimeter errors, that would have got the aircraft too low causing it to hit an obstacle on approach. The pressure setting for the altimeter passed to the aircraft would be recorded but since this is a Russian military airfield, what are the odds that we will get to hear it?

Next to none?

Anyway, that was my guess as well, the thing is that according to the controller (or rather to the media claiming quoting him) the a/c had a correct altitude when they still had contact with the crew, which means (don't remember the exact number) some 2 to 3 thousand meters from the threshold. Does it matter? Another thing that I've learned from a Russian forum is that DME had been removed from the avionics last December during the a/c overhaul. That's pity as Smolensk still has it and they were compatible.

 

[Niall]

Jane Burgermeister, "Irish-Austrian journalist" who supposedly sued Baxter pharmaceutical over live 'Swine Flu' vaccines last year, has produced this video report claiming the Polish plane was deliberately crashed:

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUkobHYAlk&feature=player_embedded

There are lots of holes in it. For example, she's taken a leap of faith assuming that there were in fact gunshots in the video we discussed earlier. She says the lack of bodies seen in the video footage of the immediate aftermath is because most of the people listed as being on the plane were not actually on it - they were probably abducted and killed beforehand - a scenario akin to Flight 77 that never hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

In terms of context she says the Polish govt rejected the swine flu hysteria and did not buy stockpiles of vaccines and (presumeably) did not begin a mass vaccination program. The PTB were supposedly out for the Polish elite because they were acting for the people in keeping Poland's currency and economy relatively healthy, thus warding off any need for IMF support and any urgency for Poland to join the eurozone.

 

[Niall]

Thinking more about how this crash could have happened; one way was for the controller to pass the wrong pressure setting for the altimeter as I described here. The pilot wouldn't know any better unless he was checking his altitude as he passed certain markers, like the NDB antenna, for example. Since on an NDB approach, there usually is only one marker for height check purposes, once the pilot passed that marker, there would be no further checks available. It would be easier if I had the actual approach plate flown so that I could work out the exact altitudes.

So a difference of only 3 hectopascals is equivalent to approximately 90ft, which means to say that the altimeter would be over-reading (the aircraft is lower than what is shown on the altimeter) and coupled with the cold weather altimeter errors, that would have got the aircraft too low causing it to hit an obstacle on approach. The pressure setting for the altimeter passed to the aircraft would be recorded but since this is a Russian military airfield, what are the odds that we will get to hear it?

Anyone recall the movie Die Hard 2 with Bruce Willis? Terrorists have hijacked a plane remotely and managed to override the instruments by taking over the air traffic control system at Washington Dulles airport. At one point one of the incoming planes is deliberately crashed by the terrorists remotely overriding the plane's instrument landing system, effectively tricking the pilot's navigation system into thinking that the runway was coming up later than it actually was. So the plane (in bad weather incidentally) plowed into the runway as the pilot didn't see it till too late.

One year after the events of Die Hard, John McClane (Bruce Willis), is waiting on Christmas Eve at Washington Dulles International Airport for his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) to arrive from Los Angeles, spots two men dressed in army fatigues and carrying a package. Following them into the baggage area, McClane ends up in a fight, killing one of them while the other escapes. Learning the dead man is a mercenary who was thought to be killed in action, McClane believes something is about to happen.

Former U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) and other former members of his unit, set up a base in a small church near the airport. They take over air traffic control systems, stating that they want to rescue Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero), a drug lord and dictator of a South American country named Val Verde, who is flying in for a trial. They demand a Boeing 747 so they can escape to another country, and warn the Dulles controllers not to try to restore control. Upon learning about this, McClane becomes upset because his wife is on one of the planes which are circling above Washington with too little fuel to be redirected and therefore most likely to crash if the terrorists remain in control, and therefore decides to fight the terrorists.

Dulles communications director Leslie Barnes (Art Evans) heads to the unfinished Annex Skywalk with a SWAT team to establish communications with the planes. Stuart's men ambush them, killing the SWAT team. Before they can kill Barnes, McClane bursts in and kills Stuart's men. Stuart responds by using the instrument landing system to crash a plane, killing everyone on board.

A two-way radio dropped by one of Stuart's men tips McClane off that Esperanza is landing. He gets there before Stuart's men, but Stuart traps him in the cabin and throws grenades into the cockpit. McClane escapes through the ejection seat. McClane returns to the airport to find an Army Special Forces team led by Major Grant (Amos) has arrived. Barnes and McClane discover where the mercenaries are located and tell Grant and his team to raid it. However, the mercenaries escape on snowmobiles. McClane pursues them, but finds that the gun he picked up does not work. He realizes the mercenaries and Special Forces were using blanks in their guns and are working together.

McClane contacts the airport police to send out officers to intercept the plane. Reporter Richard Thornberg (Atherton), on the same flight as Holly, phones in a sensational take on what is happening at Dulles, leading to panic in the airport, and preventing the officers from reaching the plane. McClane hitches a ride on a news helicopter, which drops him off on the wing of the plane. Grant comes out to fight, but ends up sucked into the engine. Stuart kicks McClane off the plane, but McClane manages to open the fuel hatch. He uses a cigarette lighter to ignite the trail of leaking fuel, destroying the plane and killing all on board. The other planes, circling in the air, use the lighted trail to land, and Holly and McClane are reunited.

 

[Vulcan59]

Hi POB,

Thanks for the chart. Okay, so at the start of the approach the aircraft should be at a distance of 10.41km and at a height of 500 meters. Then at 6.10km from the runway, he should be passing the first NDB called "OK" with the frequency of 310Khz at 300 meters. By 1.10km from the threshold, the aircraft should have been at 70 meters and passing over another NDB called "O" with a frequency of 640Khz. From the reports, I understand that the aircraft impacted the NDB antenna at the 1.10km or the NDB "O". I cannot decipher what the visibility requirement for this approach is. There is a "V>300" at the bottom of the chart but to my knowledge, that would be too low for an NDB approach.

70 meters translates to 230ft and the elevation of the airfield is 725ft (the threshold elevation is not stated on the chart or perhaps I am not sure of the other numbers there) and so as the aircraft passed the NDB "O" the correct altitude should be 725ft + 230ft = 955ft (291 meters approximately). Note that the aircraft was not suppose to go below this 70 meters altitude unless he was over the NDB "O".

A normal NDB antenna would be around 20 to 25ft in height and in this case it could have been higher (perhaps 40ft) to counter the signal propagation errors due to high terrain. But lets assume that it was about 25ft. If the wrong altimeter pressure setting was given coupled with cold weather altimeter errors, the aircraft would have been been low enough to hit that antenna or some other object higher than the antenna.

So based on the chart above, cold weather altimeter errors and wrong pressure settings could easily lead the aircraft to be at a lower altitude then published or shown on the altimeter, meaning that the altimeter would still show 70 meters when the actual or true altitude would have been much lower and the pilot would be completely unaware of the fact.

 

[Windmill knight]

There are lots of holes in it. For example, she's taken a leap of faith assuming that there were in fact gunshots in the video we discussed earlier. She says the lack of bodies seen in the video footage of the immediate aftermath is because most of the people listed as being on the plane were not actually on it - they were probably abducted and killed beforehand - a scenario akin to Flight 77 that never hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

I just watched and I agree. It feels like a lot of speculation and assumptions with very little data to back it up. One thing that seems particularly weak is why she insists that there were no bodies on the crash site because they were all taken care beforehand. First, just because we don't see the bodies in the video it doesn't mean there weren't any. Second, if someone wanted to eliminate the Polish elite, why do it the hard way one by one and then cover it up with a plane crash? Why not have them all dead with one blow? Had they been killed or kidnapped in advance, wouldn't we have heard at least something weird going on before the crash? Unless of course she means that the original plane was hijacked with the whole gang and the one that crashed is a cover. In that case they wanted them all alive; but why?

Lots of speculation with too little data, as I said.

In terms of context she says the Polish govt rejected the swine flu hysteria and did not buy stockpiles of vaccines and (presumeably) did not begin a mass vaccination program. The PTB were supposedly out for the Polish elite because they were acting for the people in keeping Poland's currency and economy relatively healthy, thus warding off any need for IMF support and any urgency for Poland to join the eurozone.

As reasons to eliminate the whole Polish government they don't ring very true to me. What was really exceptional about those people that required their disappearance?

To be honest I am undecided about what really happened in this case. Planes carrying entire governments don't just crash by accident - it's too much of a coincidence. But who would do it and why?

I will also admit that the gunshots of the video are suspicious, but then again they are no proof as the video could have been altered, and even if they are genuine, we don't know who was shooting what, or even if those were actual shots and not something else. It is interesting though that the versions shown on tv didn't have the gunshots.

 

[Niall]

Poland's internal swine flu fight

_http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/poland/091203/poland-swine-flu

Warsaw, Poland — Poland is standing alone against the swine flu, as one of the only European Union member states to refuse to place orders for the H1N1 virus vaccine because of the health minister's concerns about its safety.

But now the country’s human rights ombudsman is threatening the health minister, Ewa Kopacz, with prosecution unless she moves on the vaccine.

Kopacz, who is also a doctor, is worried about the vaccine and is refusing to act until the pharmaceutical companies making the vaccine accept responsibility for any side effects, something they have been excused from by the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic.

“If I had a 100 percent certainty that the vaccine was a panacea for the swine flu, I would certainly buy it,” Kopacz said in an interview with radio station Tok FM, adding that she felt drug companies were “covering up” some information about the vaccines.

“I feel that the research on the vaccines lasted too short a time,” she said.

Kopacz’s stand is very different from most of her European counterparts. Mass vaccination programs have begun in France, Germany and Scandinavia, as well as in central European countries like Hungary.

Her position has put her at odds with Janusz Kochanowski, who heads Poland’s human rights office, and worries that Poland is completely unprepared for dealing with a potential swine flu epidemic. He is toying with the idea of filing charges against Kopacz.

“What is the ombudsman supposed to do when he is powerless and ignored?” Kochanowski asked in a Tok FM interview. “I wake up with this issue and go to sleep with it, because my back is up against the wall and I don’t see any other answer.”

Despite Kopacz' medical background, there are concerns that she is taking a potential risk if the current influenza season gets much worse. Kochanowski has said that he doesn’t know how many people’s deaths Kopacz will have on her conscience. He has called on Poles to inoculate themselves in other European countries where the vaccination is available.

A deputy health minister, in turn, has threatened to refer Kochanowski to the prosecutor’s office for complicating the ministry’s work.

As of Saturday, health authorities have said that 38 people have died in Poland from the swine flu and about 750 have been infected. However, the true level of infections is impossible to determine, both because people with milder cases tend not to report them, and because Poland has very few tests to confirm the presence of the H1N1 virus. Most of the tests have to be performed in neighboring Germany.

As well as lacking tests, the Polish health care system also needs more equipment like artificial lungs, to keep patients with severe influenza cases breathing.

The Polish media has been consumed with the swine flu story, reporting every death and serious case. So far there has been no panic like in neighboring Ukraine, where the country was paralyzed with fear a couple of weeks ago, with schools being shut down and thousands donning generally ineffective face masks to protect themselves against the virus.

Although there is something of the hypochondriac in the Polish character — garlic cures and energy treatments are popular – it is more than balanced by a conspiratorial worldview which would subscribe to the idea of pharmaceutical companies keeping knowledge of the side effects of vaccines to themselves, as well as a suspicion of bureaucracy, including the health ministry.

But if the disease takes a turn for the worse, then Kopacz’s stand could have political ramifications. She is a minister in the center-right government of Donald Tusk, and Kochanowski is a political ally of Lech Kaczynski, Poland’s right-wing president and Tusk’s likely rival in next year’s presidential elections.

On his web page, Kochanowski’s office has a note for every patient killed by the swine flu virus.

It's not difficult to see how this brave woman annoyed the hell out of the PTB:

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn3ElOkqND0&feature=related

If you watch it till the end, there's a curious attack from the opposition health minister, where he implies that her stance against the Swine Flu vaccine (thoroughly justified as events transpire) is indicative of her 'affliction by the NWO conspiracy theory disease'!

This doesn't support Burgermeister's theory, but I think it's interesting that Poland was the black sheep of Europe for refusing to jump on the Swine bandwagon.

Here's Poland's PM Donald Tusk basically saying Swine Flu was a scam and that his government wouldn't play ball:

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34HZ5JBQt0E&feature=related

 

[Windmill knight]

This doesn't support Burgermeister's theory, but I think it's interesting that Poland was the black sheep of Europe for refusing to jump on the Swine bandwagon.

Yes to both. It is very interesting, but I think it might not only not support, but even make less likely, Burgermeister's theory. Ewa Kopacz was not on the plane:

_http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/world/europe/13crash.html

PM Donald Tusk (also against vaccines) is also still alive and in charge:

_http://euroradio.fm/en/1180/reports/46260/ (the man in the picture of that article is Kaczynski, not Tusk)

while president Lech Kaczynski died, who was from a different party and an ally of the ombudsman Janusz Kochanowski, who was in favor of vaccines.

I'm trying to find what Kaczynski's view on swine flu was, but I can't find anything... But even if he was against vaccines, wasn't it a bit too late to punish Poland for an issue which is basically dead?

 

[Niall]

I don't think this was about targeting specific individuals, if anything this was about "sending a message" a la Secret Team. Poland's reluctance to join the Euro, its success at keeping the IMF at bay and it's dogmatic refusal to accept the Swine Flu 'recommendations' of the EU regulatory authority involved are all interesting contextual factors that may or may not prove significant if this turns out to have been an 'inside-job'. I'm wondering if Poland's government was a little too conscientious (ie too many humans in the senior positions of government) for the PTB, and therefore needed to be brought into line by... well, by eliminating it.

 

[Possibility of Being]

Thanks for the chart. Okay, so at the start of the approach the aircraft should be at a distance of 10.41km and at a height of 500 meters. Then at 6.10km from the runway, he should be passing the first NDB called "OK" with the frequency of 310Khz at 300 meters. By 1.10km from the threshold, the aircraft should have been at 70 meters and passing over another NDB called "O" with a frequency of 640Khz. From the reports, I understand that the aircraft impacted the NDB antenna at the 1.10km or the NDB "O". I cannot decipher what the visibility requirement for this approach is. There is a "V>300" at the bottom of the chart but to my knowledge, that would be too low for an NDB approach.

Thanks Vulcan.

The aircraft didn't impact the antenna, they touched a tree (8m high) first at the distance of 1050m from the RWY, in 200m impacted a thick birch tree with the left wing (lost part of it) while climbing, and began to spin impacting some more trees and bushes on the way, and eventually crashed falling on the roof some 300m from the threshold. Here you have three pictures that can help you to get an idea: 1, 2, 3. On the 3rd picture you can find the plane altitude and its spin in degrees.

The airfield visibility requirements for the NDB approach is 100x1000 while at that moment the visibility was 60x400 (or 500) plus thick fog.

So based on the chart above, cold weather altimeter errors and wrong pressure settings could easily lead the aircraft to be at a lower altitude then published or shown on the altimeter, meaning that the altimeter would still show 70 meters when the actual or true altitude would have been much lower and the pilot would be completely unaware of the fact.

Do you know what are possible consequences of having the TAWS on when no data on a given airport exists? That's exactly the case of Tu-154M.

 

[Vulcan59]

Thanks POB for the pictures. The second NDB "O" station is 1.10km from the runway and the antenna would be around 8m and so to impact a tree of 8m at 1050m is almost right past that NDB antenna and so the aircraft was certainly way below the published 70m height required at the NDB. It's impossible to drop from 70m to 8m in that very short 50m distance. So the wrong pressure setting and cold weather altimeter errors is looking very likely to me at this point.

I am not sure what 100x1000 means but fog, in aviation terminology, is defined as visibility of 1000m or less. In this case if the requirement was 100x1000 and the actual visibility was only 60x400, that would be below the minimums required for this approach and so the ATC would be correct to close the airfield and tell all aircraft to go to another airfield. So it is a sure sign that the pilot chose to ignore ATC advise and was under pressure to at least attempt an approach and hopefully land at this airfield.

As for the TAWS, if there is no data base for the airport, the TAWS will automatically generate "Pull Up" warnings but having been there before, the pilot would certainly have known of this fact. And so it is logical that he may have selected an over-ride to the terrain warning or chose to ignore it. Procedurally, if the TAWS does not have the data base for a particular airfield, the pilot can still proceed and over-ride the warnings (press a button which will not generate the pull up warning) or ignore the warning provided the pilot is visual with the ground. If the pilot is not visual or the visibility is poor like in this example, it was pure folly to over-ride or ignore the terrain warnings.

One of the requirements for TAWS is a radio altimeter which is basically an altimeter that does not rely on pressure settings to read altitude. The radio altimeter generally gives altitude below 2500ft (760m). And so as the pilot passed the first NDB station at 300meters (985ft) the radio altimeter, assuming no errors, would be showing 260ft (985 -725 airfield elevation). Note that the actual elevation over this NDB station could be higher or lower but I am assuming it's the same as the airfield elevation.

Now just imagine that the pressure altimeter was over-reading(aircraft is lower) say by 100ft. As the aircraft passed that point at 300meter pressure altimeter, the radio altimeter would only show 160ft instead of 260ft! So basically the radio altimeter would be showing the correct height above terrain and provided the correct signals to the TAWS for a "Pull Up" warning but either the TAWS was over-ridden or the pilot chose to ignore the warning. If the pilot had counter checked his pressure altitude versus the radio altitude, he would have seen that he was low and done something about it but obviously he didn't notice that and chose to ignore or over-ride the TAWS system. Tragedy was the result. :(

 

[Vulcan59]

Hi POB,

After giving it some more thought here is how it could have happened. The approach chart shows that one has to cross the first NDB "OK" at 300m and the second NDB "O" at 70m. The distance between the two is 5km. To cover the distance assuming a ground speed of 222km per hour (120kts) it would take about 1minute and 21seconds.

Now looking at the height; the aircraft has to lose 300m minus 70m or 230m in that 1minute and 21seconds. That would necessitate a rate of descent of about 2.8m per second which is pretty normal. The difference in height over the NDB "O" (70m) minus the tree height (8m) is 62m. If you extrapolate that difference back to the NDB "OK" that would translate it to 300m minus 62m which equals 238m. In other words, the aircraft crossed the NDB "OK" at 238m instead of 300m.

The airfield elevation is 221m. The difference between 238m and 221m is 17m which equates almost exactly to the cold weather altimeter errors as I mentioned above (close enough for horse shoes).

As I mentioned above the QFE and QNH setting (pressure setting for the altimeters) note that Russian ATC uses QFE and to get QNH, one must request for it. Therefore it could presumably be that the pilot asked for and was given and had set QNH but all the while thinking that it was QFE forgetting to add the elevation of the airfield to the altitude values on the chart (assume 4D/hyperdimensional interference here).

Therefore he would have flown the approach perfectly, crossing at the exact stipulated altitude but would have been low throughout the approach impacting the tree. The ATC would not be culpable since they would easily play back the tape and cite the correct pressure setting was given and also that the aircraft was told to proceed to another airfield. All the blame would be heaped on the pilot. If the "black box" contents were to be revealed, it would correlate to the facts above not to mentioned that it would also show the pilot had chosen to over-ride or ignore the TAWS warning that the aircraft was too low. Even the altimeters would be shown to be reading correctly.

The only thing that would be difficult to explain would be why the pilot mistook QNH for QFE, why he did not counter check the pressure altimeter reading with the radio altimeter and why he chose to either over-ride or ignore the TAWS warnings. Hyperdimensional forces messing around?