Polish President killed

[Fredledingue]

Huh! Given the position of the debris, I can't believe that the plane was prepared for landing when it hit the ground.

The landing strip where it had to land is only patrtly visible on the top of the photo, several degrees off the plan direction.
I don't think a plane that big can change direction after hiting something before hitting the ground. Maybe it's possible but I have doubts.

I still have doubts about why no large segment of the cabin have remained.
In every plane crash there are.

Also there is no trace on the ground of the plane crashing track (fallen trees, earth removed, etc) which suggest the debris fell before the plane was destroyed. The debris themselves opened a way through the woods, but nothing before that. The area between the debris and the road for example is intact. The road itself whould have been cut.
There seem to be some cracks on the road nearby, but if the plane hit the road we would see debris already there and traces before and after the road.

[WmLambert]

If the airport did not have a directional radar source, I doubt it would be used by a plane with the president of a country on board, and as poor quality the plane may have been, it would be able to track on the radar beacon.

For the plane to miss the runway as dramatically as it did, the pilot in a heavy fog had to have been on visual approach. Those big planes can land in the fog on gauges alone and no need of eyesight. In fact, most pilots use their gauges to land and only look up at the last moment to tweak into a soft one-point landing.

I see equipment malfunction and human error in the mix somewhere. I mentioned Ron Brown's crash before... not because of the conspiracy myth aspect which is substantial, but because of the info that came from that investigation that mentioned the possibility of a rogue agent who may have placed a suitcase-sized beacon on the mountain, that caused the aircraft to zero in on it, instead of the airport beacon. Since this capability is out there, it most be taken into consideration in all such cases.

[Fredledingue]

Interresting idea, the fake beacon, WmL.
Because if they choosed the visual aproach, they wouldn't have attempted to land without actualy seeing the landing strip. They obviousely didn't see it.

Yesterday I was reading a professional pilot blog (very technical talks) (in french) and they didn't understand what was the cause of the crash. They talked about several hypothesis about different measure standards in use, one as crazy as a counting feets for meters.
But they couldn't understand such dramatic mistake since the pilots would have two or three different gauges to compare and they should have seen a problem.

One article said that the air controlers in Smolenks didn't speak english, that the pilots spoke russian enough well but had problems understanding numbers. That's ridiculous since numbers in Polish and in Russians are almost the same (except for 90 which can be taken for 19 - like in english-).

One thing is clear: the plane desintegrated before hitting the ground or it flopped suddenly without scraping the ground. According to the blog, the plane should have hit an antenea or a solid construction, not trees. But the news never talked about anteneas. Moreover such construction would have flashing lights atop of it.

[Fredledingue]

Now that's funny!

Poland finds other body parts in coffin of president killed in 2010 crash

and not only:

the coffin of Archbishop Miron Chodakowski contained only the upper half of his body while the lower half belonged to late General Tadeusz Ploski.

In the coffin of General Bronislaw Kwiatkowski there were 14 body parts belonging to seven other people

[John L]

Now that's funny!

Poland finds other body parts in coffin of president killed in 2010 crash

and not only:

the coffin of Archbishop Miron Chodakowski contained only the upper half of his body while the lower half belonged to late General Tadeusz Ploski.

In the coffin of General Bronislaw Kwiatkowski there were 14 body parts belonging to seven other people

LOL, Oh this soo rich Fred.  Only Russia, eh?!  

It makes one wonder here.  One, did the Russians do this on purpose: probably not.  Two, were members of the forensic team drunk: entirely possible. Three, were they just totally incompetent: most likely.  

This is great example of why I have far less respect for their war making capabilities.  Imagine a Russian pilot flying what is supposed to be a high tech attack jet, and wondering if......

A- Am I going to survive long enough to make it to my destination?

B- What's going to break down now?

C- Why am I doing this anyway?

And lastly, but far more importantly, D- If NATO shoots me down, will my parachute work?  

Good Gawd Almighty!  

[Fredledingue]

Seriousely: If the russians were so careless, it means they were not interested in running a proper enquiry. And if they din't need a proper enquiry, it means that they knew already everything.