The crew of the Polish president's plane, which crashed in Russia last Saturday killing President Lech Kaczynski and other top officials, attempting to land without permission, an air traffic controller said on Tuesday.

A Soviet-made Tu-154 plane was carrying a delegation of Poland's top public figures to pay tribute to some 20,000 Polish officers executed by Soviet secret police in 1940. It hit the top of trees while attempting to land at the Severny military airport near the western Russian city of Smolensk in thick fog. All 96 people on board were killed in the crash.

Col. (Ret.) Anatoly Muravyov, the air traffic controller who was guiding the plane during the landing, told the Komsomolskaya Pravda Russian daily that the crew "did not listen" to recommendations to divert to another airport.

"The head of the traffic control group warned of poor weather conditions, but the crew went ahead with the landing without permission. And [they] also made their landing approach without permission," Muravyov said.

"The [control tower] head said three times to execute a flyby procedure. When the crew did not listen, the control tower could only continue to guide the plane and watch it. It was the only landing approach, the plane crashed at once," he added.

Muravyov said the controllers were unable to give a direct command to divert because "we have no rights to give orders to civilian pilots."

The traffic controller said the plane's crew did not follow the standard procedure of informing the control tower of all the performed maneuvers and altitude, possibly because of a language barrier.


http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100413/158559617.html

Yep, that seems to be the line emerging. Very sad. The pilot was under pressure to get the delegation on the ground ASAP. God knows what he was being threatened with. Conspiracy theorists are going nuts, of course, but the Polish President had a record of pilot-bullying. I hope pilots' trade unions are screaming from the rooftops about bullying VIPs, not least because I live in London, private jets pass through the airspace all the time, and I'm damned if plane load of bullying bigwigs is crashing on my street.

NB There's a Mawk Thread here should you feel the need for collective emoting.