The official explanation of catastrophe was hitting the birch during landing attempt... while the airplane was at about 30 meters of altitude (yes, it was a birch not sequoia).
They made only one attempt and were on about 30 meters when the series of failures (engines, electrical power, deck computer, steering, etc.) were recorded by black box devices. The airplane broke into thousands of pieces over the swamp near the Smolensk airport.
How does one go from speculations about explosions on the aircraft to claims of assassination? How about applying an Occam's razor every once in a while?
Occam's razor? What about any common sense? Note that within minutes from the catastrophe there was already the government camp claiming that this was clearly an accident with no fault on either side and the president camp speculating that this was an assassination. The fact that investigation after that was kind of a bad joke didn't help to silence the second camp.
Because "accident" is how you call such disasters? Also, people in the industry knew the less-than-sterling reputation of governmental transport service.
EDIT: I should clarify that "accident" is a specific class of event in aircraft accident investigation, together with "incident". It's literally "aviation terminology" stuff.
A plane crash caused by pilot error is the definition of an accident. Not intentional, unexpected, and uncontrolled. The scale or tragedy of the accident doesn't remove the fact that it's an accident.
accident:
[1] An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.
[2] A crash involving road or other vehicles, typically one that causes serious damage or injury.
"But the tree impact that supposedly precipitated the crash wouldn't have caused enough wing damage to down the plane, said Binienda ... It's absolutely impossible that the wing sheared and then it crashed the way [government investigators] described" - that's all they have, an opinion of a conspiracy nut. I don't buy this for a second, and here's why:
Oh, and the explosion would be heard by both people on the ground (some random guy was right next to the crash scene, he even put a video on youtube), and on the black box recording (transcript available).
Alternative research done by the independent experts from US and Australia (like http://goo.gl/YREux by www.simulate-events.com) is being ignored and / or silenced.
Aircraft pilots, even highly trained ones, overreact in non standard situations. The simulation argues that the plane could not have been significantly damaged by the tree. The simulation doesn't say anything about pilot's reaction to the collision event. An attempt by the pilot to compensate for impact is more likely to have caused damaged than the impact itself.
Except it's not 100 tons of steel. It's a very delicate structure of tons of parts, and the part that got damaged wasn't the most resilient (nor did it account for 100 tons of steel). Breaking into pieces happened when the whole plane hit the ground in the worst possible (for airliner) way - upside down. At over 180 km/h.
Audio recording of their final minutes is available on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPjzMwAFrmc ) and is in line with the official version (for instance, pilots start swearing and screaming a couple of seconds before the end, right after the controller says something about height and a second approach)
This article is a load of hogwash. "The heart of the pro-Western Polish leadership"? This is silly on so many levels.
I hope this kind of conspiracy theory raving will not make it onto the HN frontpage too often.
As to the crash, it was a CFIT (controlled flight into terrain). There are cockpit recordings right until the moment the plane hit the tree and then the ground. No explosions.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 78.2 ms ] threadEDIT: I should clarify that "accident" is a specific class of event in aircraft accident investigation, together with "incident". It's literally "aviation terminology" stuff.
accident:
[1] An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.
[2] A crash involving road or other vehicles, typically one that causes serious damage or injury.
A proof of an explosion (which this is not) would be proof of an assasination.
"But the tree impact that supposedly precipitated the crash wouldn't have caused enough wing damage to down the plane, said Binienda ... It's absolutely impossible that the wing sheared and then it crashed the way [government investigators] described" - that's all they have, an opinion of a conspiracy nut. I don't buy this for a second, and here's why:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19550616-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freckleton_Air_Disaster
EDIT:
Oh, and the explosion would be heard by both people on the ground (some random guy was right next to the crash scene, he even put a video on youtube), and on the black box recording (transcript available).
The wreck was left on open air for several months: http://en.rian.ru/world/20110112/162110789.html
..than washed by Russians: http://freepl.info/2380-tu-154-wreckage-washed-itself
I'm saying there's no good evidence of it. So far there are natural explanations of what happened, plus the douchebaggery of the Russian politicians.
Alternative research done by the independent experts from US and Australia (like http://goo.gl/YREux by www.simulate-events.com) is being ignored and / or silenced.
Pity the facts, right?
I hope this kind of conspiracy theory raving will not make it onto the HN frontpage too often.
As to the crash, it was a CFIT (controlled flight into terrain). There are cockpit recordings right until the moment the plane hit the tree and then the ground. No explosions.
Yep, it's very off topic. Conspiracy theory debates are about the last thing you want on a site like this.