MOSCOW, (Reuters) – Psychological pressure on the crew of a plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski to a ceremony in Russia may have led to the April crash that killed him and 95 others, Russian aviation officials said today.
“He’ll get mad,” one of the plane’s crew members said, according to a flight recording excerpt aired during a press conference by Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) on the probe into the crash that killed Kaczynski and 95 others.
The comment was in Polish and a Russian language translation was provided by the IAC.
IAC head Tatiana Anodina said the decision to push ahead with a landing in adverse weather conditions was the direct cause of the crash that killed many of Poland’s leading political and military officials.
“On the one hand he (the pilot) knew the plane shouldn’t be landing in these conditions, on the other hand there was a strong pressure on board to bring the plane to a landing,” she told a news briefing presenting the final report on the crash.
She said the presence of Kaczynski on the plane and of high-level officials, including the Polish air force chief, inside the cockpit influenced the pilot’s decision not to abort the landing and instead try to fly to another airstrip.
“The expected negative reaction of the main passenger” to a recommendation not to land “placed psychological pressure on crew members and influenced the decision to continue the landing,” Anodina said, clearly referring to Kaczynski.
The crash, which took place in thick fog near Russia’s Smolensk airport on April 10, killed Kaczynski, his wife and many other senior Polish government officials and lawmakers.
Poland, which received the IAC’s report in December, said at the time that it was dissatisfied with its findings, sparking new tensions between Warsaw and Moscow.
