Investigators Focus on Tupolev 154 Jetliner

Investigators seeking the cause of a plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and a delegation including dozens of high-level officials on Saturday are likely to focus on both the Tupolev 154 jetliner and the pilots' actions.

The Russian-made plane, which was 20 years old, had been overhauled in December at a Russian aviation facility and had flown relatively few hours.

The Tu-154, which crashed outside Smolensk, Russia, was on its fourth attempt to land amid heavy fog. Investigators will seek to understand why the crew tried bring the plane down in such unfavorable conditions.

Russian media reported that the airplane's pilot ignored warnings to abort his landing outside of Smolensk and land instead in Minsk or Moscow. The jet crashed about a kilometer short of the runway at the Smolensk-Severnyi military airport, shortly before 11 a.m. Moscow time.

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BY IRA IOSEBASHVILI AND DANIEL MICHAELS 
Investigators seeking the cause of a plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and a delegation including dozens of high-level officials on Saturday are likely to focus on both the Tupolev 154 jetliner and the pilots' actions.

The Russian-made plane, which was 20 years old, had been overhauled in December at a Russian aviation facility and had flown relatively few hours.

The Tu-154, which crashed outside Smolensk, Russia, was on its fourth attempt to land amid heavy fog. Investigators will seek to understand why the crew tried bring the plane down in such unfavorable conditions.

Russian media ...

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Checkout this video animation of the crash (from Norwegian Broadcast Corporation NRK)

Since I can't read the write-up at the site, I haven't the foggiest idea upon what data the animation is derived from. However, from post #230 at Airliner.net

Quoting 3MilesToWRO (Reply 211):
I've found some reliably-looking information. According to Russian aviation officials until 2 km before airfield and 100 m altitude everything looked normal. 1,5 km before airfield ATC noticed the aircraft to be too low and advised corrections, but there was no or not sufficient response. First impact was into 8 m high tree where the aircraft should be at 60 m.
Fuel exhaustion.
I haven't seen anybody bring up this possibility before. Your later comments about the engines not making noise support that.

If the animation is based on preliminary blackbox data, engine shutdown certainly would be plausible; a stall definitely appears to be indicated. If the most recent obs was something akin to:

SPECI XUBS 00000KT 1/4SM RVR15V10 FG VV002 0/M1 A2991

would be suggestive that the aircraft is coming in low and slow above the weeds so as to get a fix on the airport / runway, because visibility for a circling approach is too low. I'm just guessing on the wx aspect of the situation. But it offers a plausible explanation for a stall other than fuel exhaustion. On the other hand the temps indicated in the fictional obs above are at freezing (dewpoint depression -1 Deg. C). What if the aircraft was flying through freezing fog, throttles were at idle and just plain flamed out?

That notwithstanding, here is some interesting commentary from KUBUS @ airliners.net (post #229):

Given that both pilots, navigator and mechanic were military, and the head of Polish Air Force was also onboard, some could speculate that order was given to land by the General. However the same rules apply as in civil aviation, it is PIC's plane, and there was a perfect example of president being overruled by pilot.
From reading in Polish papers, the conditions were not good in Smolensk - 80m cloud cover and 500m visibility. Smolensk does not have ILS. I didn't find min ceiling but min visibility is 1000m for Smolensk. So they were below minimums in one aspect.
There was an example given of IL-76 bringing people from Moscow, that diverted back to Moscow, shortly before Polish plane crashed. The IL-76 as well as the captain of it was based in Smolensk, so someone who knows the airport, didn't want to land there.
Also in most places it was stated that it was 1st or 2nd attempt of landing, not 4th. Witnesses on the ground stated that the plane circled the airport at least once. Also based on Russian's Military, the ATC suggested and then directed the 154 to divert, when it was noticed it was at a lower landing altitude right before the crash. There was one article that mentioned the pilots were going to attempt to land and then if they couldn't they will go around, so that would confirm that it crashed on 1st try.
ATC did not release the tapes yet, so the go around or divert that they claim was given cannot be verified.
Both Black Boxes were found, and turned to Polish investigators - Putin made a point in making sure they were not opened without Poles present.
With the information so far, pilot error would be the apparent reason, however it's never a single reason in a crash. I'm suspecting that there was something else. In couple articles and based on what ATC reported (so far) the plane was much lower on approach then it should be - 8m vs 60m. I'm wondering if either the wrong information was entered in pre-flight (Smolensk has 2 airports) in terms of altitude of runway, or the information onboard was wrong.
Lastly, for the crowd saying 154 is just a bad plane. This 154M (it's the LUX version) was relatively new and low hour plane. Look over a the avherald.com and see how many mechanical incidents are reported on daily basis.

The credibility of the above poster's comments should be evaluated based on the poster's profile at the aforementioned forum, i.e., occupation: media.

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