Poland calls for solidarity

The ill-fated journey that wiped out Poland's governing elite on Saturday was prompted by an angry feud between President Lech Kaczynski and his Prime Minister over the country's tense relationship with Russia, it emerged yesterday.

As the body of the 60-year-old President, who died along with 95 senior religious, political and military figures, lay in state and Poland struggled to come to terms with its worst national tragedy since the Second World War, details of the political acrimony that preceded the disaster surfaced in Warsaw.

A constantly changing crowd now gathers in front of the city's white stucco presidential palace where the pavements have disappeared under an ocean of flowers, flickering candles in glass holders and photographs of the deceased President and his wife, Maria.

Many queued for hours to sign a book of condolences. Jana Sokolowska, a 45-year-old office worker with three children, said she had taken the day off work to join the long line snaking into the palace building. "I felt I had to do something," she said. "This is one of the saddest times for Poland and I wanted to show my solidarity and sympathy with all the relatives of those killed in the crash," she added.

A joint funeral will be held on Saturday at the earliest. "It is clear that the main commemoration of the victims should take place in a single event. All flew out together, so it is right that they should all be remembered together," said Jacek Sasin, a close aide of the late President.

Details emerged in Warsaw of the background to the President's fatal flight to attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers by Soviet forces.

Sources said Mr Kaczynski and many in his entourage on board the doomed Tupolev were dissatisfied with attempts to effect a reconciliation over the 1940 massacre at a special ceremony in Katyn on Wednesday called by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin, a former KGB agent, had invited his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, to attend a special ceremony of remembrance.

But the soft-glove handling of that event by Mr Tusk tried the patience of the Polish President, who had not been invited. He resolved to fly to Katyn himself three days later in the company of his political allies in defiance of Mr Putin. "They wanted to hold their own ceremony in Katyn to give the anniversary the importance they thought it deserved but felt had been denied by Russia," a source close to the President's office said yesterday.

President Kaczynski and members of his right-wing Law and Justice party felt they had been snubbed by Russia. They were also irritated that Mr Tusk, leader of the liberal Civic Platform party, had been allowed to take credit for Wednesday's ceremony. But even more galling was the fact that Mr Putin had failed specifically to apologise or address the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn and had simply referred to "victims of Stalinist terror" during the ceremony and that Mr Tusk had apparently failed to take his Russian counterpart to task over it.

"Moscow is sabotaging attempts to give a proper historical account," said Andrejz Przewoznik, the general secretary of Poland's State Council for National Memorials. "There was no breakthrough on Katyn," remarked Aleksandr Szczyglo, president of the Polish National Security Council. Both men were on the plane and were killed in the crash.

Mr Kaczynski had a long history of rivalry with Mr Tusk. The two even argued about who was entitled to use Poland's official Tupolev 154 plane, which crashed on Saturday. With a presidential election looming, Mr Kaczynski clearly felt that he could improve on Mr Tusk's efforts at remembering in Katyn.

There was also speculation in Poland yesterday that President Kaczynski was so determined never to set foot in Moscow before extracting an apology from Mr Putin that he may have personally intervened and ordered the 36-year-old pilot of the Tupolev not to divert to the Russian capital but to land in Smolensk despite repeated warnings by air traffic controllers at the tiny airport that the fog made conditions too dangerous to attempt a touch down

Polish media reports recalled that in 2008 following Russia's invasion of Georgia, Mr Kaczynski had attempted to fly to Tibilisi to show his support for a country under siege. During the flight he took the unprecedented step of entering the cockpit and ordering the pilot to land despite adverse conditions. On that occasion the pilot refused, the aircraft diverted to another airport and Mr Kaczynski entered Georgia by car.

On Saturday, because the President's entourage was so big, the Polish media flew separately, landing an hour earlier before the fog set in. As news of the crash came in, the camera crews were left to film the shocked faces of those already at the ceremony who had been waiting for the President.

Source:independent.co.uk/

Polish air crash puts spotlight on pilots' duties

NEW YORK — Even up against tough weather and tight schedules, pilots are supposed to have the last word on when, where and how to land their aircraft. But aviation veterans, trying to make sense of the fog-shrouded crash that killed Poland's president, say pressures on pilots to keep VIP passengers on schedule can sometimes override safety considerations.

"There are certain CEOs and bosses — you are going to get them to where they want to go, and there aren't any ifs, ands or buts," said David Weitz, a pilot who has flown many corporate and union leaders.

"It plays on the pilot's mind," said Weitz, of Leesburg, Va. "He may go to some heroics that maybe he wouldn't normally do, if there's some pressure from the back of the plane."

No official conclusions have been drawn about the weekend crash in Russia that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others, including dozens of Polish political, military and religious leaders.

However, the pilot of the government plane had been warned of dense fog at the destination airport in Smolensk and was advised by traffic controllers to land elsewhere, even though that would have delayed observances of a World War II massacre.

The circumstances sparked speculation in Poland that the pilot had been pressured by his superiors to land at Smolensk rather than diverting.

Under standard aviation procedures, a landing has to be cleared by an air traffic controller. If a pilot wants to land despite controllers' advice, he can declare an emergency and land at his own risk.

"In this country, it's totally the pilot's responsibility," said FAA spokesman Les Dorr. "The only thing the controllers do is relay the weather conditions and the conditions of the runway and so forth. It's the responsibility of the captain of the aircraft to decide whether it's safe to land."

But airlines and aircraft owners sometimes pressure pilots to fly or to land against their better judgment, said safety consultant Jack Casey, a former airline pilot.

Usually, that kind of pressure — known in the industry as "pilot pushing" — is subtle, rather than overt, Casey said. Pilots may feel their job is at risk if they rebuff an employer, he said.

The issue of pilot pushing was raised last year at a House committee hearing on airline safety, which included a discussion of the FAA's effort to rewrite rules on how many hours airlines can require pilots to work in a day and how much rest they must be given between flights.

John Prater, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, testified that some regional airlines pressure pilots to fly even when they have not had enough sleep.

In general, though, it would be unusual for an airline or an aircraft owner in the U.S. or most other Western countries to attempt to override a pilot's judgment, Casey said.

"In corporate aviation, you might find a case where the boss has spent $45 million for his Gulfstream and, because of weather or whatever, he's being told he can't go where he wants to go" and resorts to pressure, Casey said.

"It's a pilot's job to separate themselves from other things in the environment such as a desire get home or a desire to get someplace on time," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "You are supposed to be weighing things based on the risk."

However, William Yavorsky, who retired in 2008 after a 40-year career as a private pilot flying political and business leaders, recalled facing intense pressure from one of his former corporate employers — including flying on a six-day, multi-stop flight around the world with working hours far exceeding the safe norms for pilots.

"The captain has the ultimate responsibility and authority, and everybody else is in an advisory capacity, including air traffic control," said Yavorsky, of Merritt Island, Fla.

"But in reality, we were scared to death of the chairman of board," he said. "When the boss has to go some place, he can make your life miserable."

Yavorsky, whose passengers over the years included a former president of the Republic of the Congo and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, said the top VIPs often were deferential to the pilots, while their executive assistants would be the ones exerting pressure to stay on schedule.

"These are the guys trying to make things work for the boss at your expense," Yavorsky said.

One potential problem, said David Weitz, is pressure by VIP passengers to land at the airport closest to their final destination, even if safety conditions would be better at a more distant airport.

"Maybe it isn't the best choice in terms of runway length, or maybe there's no mechanic there," he said.

While pressure on pilots is often subtle, investigators have pointed to it as a contributing factor in several air crashes over the years.

In its investigation of the March 2001 crash of a chartered jet at the Aspen, Colo., airport, the National Transportation Safety Board found the pilot had been under intense pressure. The flight was pushing up against the destination airport's closing time, and the customer who paid for the charter arrived late for departure from Los Angeles.

When the pilot explained he might be forced to divert to another airport, the customer was "irate" and had his assistant call the charter company to say the pilot should "keep his comments to himself."

Then, minutes before landing at Aspen — at a time so late that the curfew would make a second attempt impossible — one of the passengers stepped forward and joined the crew, buckling himself into the cockpit's jump seat.

"The presence of this passenger in the cockpit, especially if it were the charter customer, most likely further heightened the pressure on the flight crew to land" at Aspen, the NTSB found. After that crash, charter company Avjet Corp. changed its procedures to ban customers from the cockpit jump seat.

In the August 2001 crash that killed singer Aaliyah on the Caribbean island of Abaco, investigators found that the plane was packed with luggage and passengers exceeding the craft's weight limit. Airport employees said that baggage handlers and the pilot protested before takeoff, but the passengers demanded they be allowed to bring all the items.

External pressure on pilot was also cited as one of many factors that may have contributed to the April 1996 crash in Croatia that killed Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and 34 others aboard an Air Force plane. Investigators found that the crew had improperly planned the route.

"The error added 15 minutes to the planned flight time and may have caused the crew to rush the approach," the Department of Defense said in a briefing on its investigation of the crash.

"It's a reality of the job almost every day," said Mark Duell, vice president of operations of Flight Aware, whose Web site tracks status of flights in process. "The guys in the back want to get there, and the guys in the front do have the ultimate call. But when the guy in the back is screaming about firing, the pilots sometimes do give in."

In difficult conditions, air traffic controllers provide crucial information and instructions for landing, but once they give clearance, they defer to a pilot's judgment, said Ron Taylor, president of the Professional Air Controllers Organization, which represents about 300 tower workers at various airports.

"The pressure's going to be on the pilot. The controller's just advising, saying this is what we've got, this is the current weather," said Taylor, formerly a controller at Palm Beach International Airport and Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center. "The controller....can't stop him."

At U.S. airports, it is not uncommon for a pilot encountering bad weather to miss on a first approach to the runway and try again, Taylor said. But if a second attempt also fails, the rule of thumb calls for diverting the flight to a nearby airport.

In such an instance, Taylor said, there's little tension between traffic control and the crew, with most pilots maintaining a calm professionalism that betrays little hint of any pressures they may be under.

"There could be people in the back or whatever, saying 'I want to get on the ground.' That's all part of the gig. The captain knows his own limitations. He should know the terrain. He should know the approach."

But Taylor said he was astounded by reports that the crash in Smolensk came on the fifth attempt to land as perhaps a sign of extraordinary pressure on the cockpit.

The pilot "makes the final call. If it's a good call and things go right or if its a bad call and something goes wrong, he doesn't have much margin of error."

Associated Press writers Joan Lowy in Washington and Slobodan Lekic in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

Source:AFP