Talk:Smolensk air disaster

Question: Why didn't they?

4th paragraph: The accredited representatives and advisors from the Republic of Poland were not present during its presentation. br

 * Did russian investigators invite them?
 * Why didn't they show up? 
 * Were they required/expected too show up?

74.14.182.170 (talk)

"Awareness" of 2008 flight

The following text from the article is strange: "The Captain and First officer were also likely well aware of a 2008 flight when the President of Poland ordered a change in destination right before departure and again while airborne. The Captain and First Officer were First Officer and Navigator, respectively, on that flight."
According to the polish wikipedia pages on those two individuals, the last sentence is true. However, the word "likely" seems poor here. Of course they new about the 2008 flight. The were both in the cockpit! Remove the word "likely" and add a good citation for the fact that they were First Officer and Navigator on the 2008 flight. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.227.112.139 (talk) 19:29, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I have not reread them, but as I recall this is addressed in some detail in the MAK report and largely dismissed in the Polish one. Since we cannot know what was in the minds of the crew the correct approach would seem to be to refer in summary to what the investigation reports had to say, recognising the extreme sensitivity of the matter. --AJHingston (talk) 00:33, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

My original reason for writing "likely" was the MAK report surmised this incident played in the minds of the crew and may have affected their decision making. Of course the Smolensk Captain and First Officer knew about the 2008 incident, they were in the cockpit for it. The question is whether they were thinking about it on approach to Smolensk. We will never know the answer to that question so the issue is how to address the uncertainty of the matter. The MAK report does discuss it in some detail. I have yet to read the Polish report due to real life getting in the way, but when I do I will be sure to make relevant adjustments to the text. Anyone is of course welcome to do the same should they get to it first. N419BH 05:19, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

B-class review

This article is currently at start/C class, but could be improved to B-class if it had more (inline) citations. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 21:20, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Pilots last words

1. Why Poles won't write in this article the last words of pilots? The last words according to official transripts were on Polish "Bitch!" = "Kurwa mac!".

2. Why the article says nothing about extraneous persons who were present in the cockpit and were pushing on the pilots?

3. The article is absolutely pro-Polish. Pro-Polish meaning "Russions are always guilty".

An independent investigation vs. Russian propaganda

The official investigation is led by Russians, who are judges in their own case. All the evidence are in their hands. The official Polish Committee don’t have the direct access to the evidence (wreck, black boxes) and it works under a great political pressure. It mostly repeats the Russian version adding only small corrections. On 8 July 2010 Polish opposition politicians formed a Parliamentary group to investigate the causes of the catastrophe. They invited some independent experts from abroad. You can read about some of these experts here: Wiesław Binienda http://www.ecgf.uakron.edu/~civil/people/binienda/ or http://www.uakron.edu/engineering/research/profile.dot?identity=1064521 Kazimierz Nowaczyk http://cfs.umbi.umd.edu/cfs/people/kazik.html Gregory Szuladziński http://www.simulate-events.com/principals-resume.html/ Michael Baden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Baden

The official site of the Parliamentary Team is here: http://smolenskzespol.sejm.gov.pl/ This independent investigation is mostly censored in the mainstream media in Poland but is widely described by some independent media. In these media there are also journalists who worked before in Polish public broadcasting corporation “Telewizja Polska” but they were fired or degraded after they tried to investigate the circumstances of the Smolensk Catastrophe (eg. Anita Gargas, Dorota Kania, Jan Pospieszalski). There was a public hearing in Brussels held by the Parliamentary Team with, inter alia, experts and family members of the victims, video here: http://vod.gazetapolska.pl/1423-wysluchanie-publiczne-w-pe-w-sprawie-trudnosci-wyjasnienia-przyczyn-katastrofy-smolenskiej and a short report on it here (you can use google translate, despite small errors the meaning should be understood): http://niezalezna.pl/25927-smolensk-byly-dwie-eksplozje