Poland Says Crash Probe Incomplete

Reuters

In its report, Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee put the blame for last year's crash squarely on the Polish pilots and said they had come under psychological pressure to land from Polish officials on board the plane.

Polish Crash Widow Slams Moscow

Reuters

In emotional public comments a day after a Russian report on the April 10 airliner accident in which 96 Poles died, Ewa Blasik also attacked the Polish government for what she called its "passive" failure to defend the honor of its officers.

Poles Blamed for Smolensk Jet Crash

By Natalya Krainova

A video reconstructing the Tu-154 jet’s
final moments before the crash.

The plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others in Smolensk occurred because a Polish general who had been drinking pressured an underqualified pilot to land in bad weather, Russia's aviation watchdog said in its final report Wednesday.

The Interstate Aviation Committee placed full blame for the April crash on the Poles when it presented its findings at a Moscow news conference, releasing a video reconstruction of the accident complete with recordings of the pilots' conversations.

Other than the criticism of the pilot, the report did not differ much from the previously released preliminary findings, but it still sparked anger in Poland.

The Tu-154 jet's captain, Arkadiusz Protasiuk, had missed regular flight tests for landing in bad weather and did not make any actual landings in bad weather for at least five months before the crash, said Alexei Morozov, chairman of the watchdog's technical commission.

Protasiuk was also visited in the cockpit by the commander of the Polish air force, General Andrzej Blasik, who had a blood-alcohol level of about 0.06 percent, which is classified as “light drunkenness” by Russia's Health and Social Development Ministry.