Poland blames Russia over crash

29 July 2011 Last updated at 16:44 GMT The crash near Smolensk killed all those on board A Polish report has found that Russia was partly to blame for the air crash last year which killed then-President Lech Kaczynski.

It said that pilot error was the main reason for the crash, but that air controllers and poor lighting at Smolensk were also at fault.

Poland's Defence Minister Bogdan Klich resigned in the wake of the report.

The crash killed 96 people and has been a source of tension between the two countries.

A Russian report released in January laid full blame on Poland.

But Poland, while accepting some of the findings, said that Moscow's report was "incomplete".

All those on board the TU-154 Tupolev, who included officials spanning the country's military and political elite, were killed when their airliner crashed while trying to land in heavy fog.

They had been on their way to a memorial for the victims of Katyn, where 20,000 Polish officers were massacred by Soviet forces in 1940.

'Erroneous information'

The report by Warsaw said the pilot had lacked experience in landing aircraft in adverse weather conditions, and the crew was not adequately equipped.

Russia was commended for its sensitivity after the crash, but relations later deteriorated

It also found that airport lighting was "defective and incomplete", while a landing zone official had given "erroneous information" to the crew as they prepared to land in poor weather at the Russian city of Smolensk.

Air traffic controllers misinformed the crew about their true altitude during the approach and gave a crucial warning too late, it said.

In its report earlier this year, Russia had said the crash was due to pilot error and said the crew had taken unjustified risks under pressure from their superiors.

However, the Polish report said there was no evidence that Lech Kaczynski or anyone else on board had put pressure on the pilots to act against their wishes.

An official with the Russian committee which investigates air disasters said "the fundamental part" of the conclusions in the Polish report agreed with his own committee's findings.

But the official, Alexei Morozov, said they could not understand the Polish finding that the flight's crew was not influenced by senior officials in the cockpit.

Russia's handling of the disaster had originally been widely commended, but the issue later became a source of contention between the two nations.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had accepted the resignation of Mr Klich in the wake of the report's criticism of the crew.

Tomasz Siemoniak, a deputy interior minister, has replaced Mr Klich, Mr Tusk told reporters.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of the late president and opposition politician, has previously accused Mr Tusk's government of a cover-up with Moscow. Mr Tusk strongly denies the claims.

Poland's first couple - along with other leading political and military figures - had been on their way to a memorial ceremony for the World War II Katyn massacre when the crash took place on 10 April. There were no survivors.

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Russia crash 'may be pilot error'

21 June 2011 Last updated at 11:36 GMT Footage shows the aftermath of the crash

Officials are investigating the cause of a plane crash in north-western Russia that killed 44 people.

Russian Deputy PM Sergey Ivanov said the crash, near the city of Petrozavodsk, was probably caused by pilot error in poor weather conditions.

The plane had veered away from the airport runway and attempted to land on a motorway but crashed and caught fire.

Eight people including a 10-year-old boy survived the crash with severe injuries.

His 14-year-old sister and a flight attendant were also rescued from the wreckage.

The RusAir Tupolev 134 plane, with 43 passengers and nine crew on board, was flying from the capital, Moscow, to Petrozavodsk, the main city in the Karelia region.

It just missed houses close to the motorway. One source told the Interfax news agency that bodies were strewn across the road.

A mobile phone video of the scene shortly afterwards showed flames from the wreckage soaring into the night sky.

'Power cut'

Mr Ivanov said the crash resembled one in April last year in which Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others were killed as their Tu-154 plane attempted to land near the Russian city of Smolensk.

"I don't want to pre-empt the inquiry... but from the initial external data the pilot's mistake is clear - in bad weather conditions he veered to the right of the runway and in foggy conditions searched for the runway visually until the last minute [and] did not find it," he said.

But the inter-state air commission, a body which investigates air accidents in the former USSR, was quoted by AFP news agency as saying it was premature to draw conclusions about the cause.

Mr Ivanov reiterated earlier reports that the aircraft hit a power line, causing a power cut that extinguished landing lights on the runway.

Other Russian officials have said back-up systems were then switched on, but too late to stop the aircraft from crashing.

The emergencies ministry has published a full list of the passengers and the names of the survivors. One Dutch and one Swedish national, two Ukrainians and a Russian family of four with dual US citizenship were all among the dead.

Interfax news agency said most of the senior management of Gidropress, a subsidiary of the Russian nuclear export agency Rosatom, were killed, as well as Russian premier league football referee Vladimir Pettay.

The survivors are said to be in critical condition and suffering from burns.

Most have been sent to Moscow for further treatment.

A rescuer told Russian TV he managed to pull four people out of the wreckage.

"I carried out a woman in my arms. Then we brought out a large man and two people from the mid-section. Then everything burst into flames and started exploding. It was impossible to go close," he said.

The flight recorders have been recovered and a team of accident investigators has flown to the scene from Moscow.

Prosecutors say an investigation into possible violations of air transport rules is under way.

RusAir is a privately-owned, Moscow-based airline that specialises in charter flights in western Russia and eastern Europe.

The twin-engined Tu-134 is one of the work-horses of the Russian aviation industry.

Karelia is a sparsely populated region of lakes and forests bordering Finland, and a popular summer destination for Russian tourists.

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Jet crash bodies arrive in France

16 June 2011 Last updated at 10:26 GMT F-GZCP, the Air France jet which crashed, is seen here in an undated image Remains of 104 of the 228 people killed when an Air France jet crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, leaving no survivors, have arrived in France.

A ship carrying three containers of wreckage and a fourth bearing human remains from the ocean bed docked in the south-western port of Bayonne.

The harbour was closed off by the authorities out of respect for bereaved families and friends.

Fifty bodies were found just after the crash but others remain missing.

Flight AF 447 went down on 1 June 2009 after running into an intense high-altitude thunderstorm, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to the French capital Paris.

The Airbus 330 plane stalled and fell out of the sky in three-and-a-half minutes, French investigators said in a technical report late last month.

While the causes of the crash are still being investigated, one theory being pursued is that the jet's speed probes failed.

Flight recorder data have raised questions over the way the crew handled the plane when the "stall alarm" was sounded. Air France, however, insists its pilots "demonstrated a totally professional attitude".

Long wait

The main wreckage of the plane was only discovered in April after a search of 10,000 sq km (3,860 sq miles) of sea floor.

A brief ceremony was expected to be held in the port before the bodies were removed to Paris for DNA identification, while the containers containing wreckage were to be sent to the city of Toulouse for analysis.

An AFP reporter in Bayonne reports that the salvage ship, the Ile-de-Sein, pulled into harbour at dawn in rain and fog.

Those on board the jet came from more than 30 countries, though most were French, Brazilian or German.

The identification process is likely to be lengthy as investigators will have to collect "ante mortem" information on each victim - from when they were alive - to compare it to evidence retrieved from their dead bodies, Reuters news agency reports.

It took around two months to identify the victims retrieved from the surface of the ocean just after the crash.

1. 0135 GMT: The crew informs the controller of the flight's location

2. 0159-0206 GMT: The co-pilot warns of turbulence ahead before the captain leaves the cockpit for a rest break

3. 0208 GMT: The plane turns left, diverting from the planned route. Turbulence increases

4. 0210 GMT: The auto-pilot and auto-thrust mechanisms disengage. The plane rolls to the right. The co-pilot attempts to raise the nose. The stall warning sounds twice and the plane's speed drops. The co-pilot calls the captain

5. 0210 GMT: The stall warning sounds again. The plane climbs to 38,000ft

6. 0211-0213 GMT: The captain re-enters the cockpit. The plane is flying at 35,000 ft but is descending 10,000 ft per minute. The co-pilot says "I don't have any more indications", pulls the nose down and the stall warning sounds again

After location 6. 02:14 GMT: Recordings stop

Source: BEA. Note: Last known position = last known position before the plane's "black boxes" were retrieved

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Fake crash stunt divides Russians

17 June 2011 Last updated at 17:38 GMT Russia has an unenviable record of traffic accidents A fierce debate is gripping Russian internet forums over a police stunt to highlight indifference towards the aftermath of traffic accidents.

A fake accident scene was staged in a village in the Astrakhan region in which a boy of 14 was covered in fake blood and placed face down by a road.

Some drivers slowed down but no-one called for help, police said.

Some human rights groups argued it was wrong to use the child despite the consent of the boy's mother.

Russia has one the worst records for traffic fatalities in the world, with a death rate more than twice the European average.

Last year alone, some 26,000 Russians died as a result of traffic accidents.

'Unacceptable'

The teenager was not harmed, and his mother, local teacher Galina Razzhigina, said she had suggested the fake accident herself.

"It's not the first time we are doing it, we have done similar things in the past," she told the BBC's Russian service.

Local police spokesman Pyotr Rusanov told the BBC the experiment had shown the irresponsible habits of local drivers.

"We just wanted to show what a problem we have with the discipline of driving," he said.

"Staging a... thriller, with bones and blood, wasn't our intention at all."

But for many the most shocking thing was the fact that a real child, not a dummy, was left lying at the side of a road.

"Such a dramatisation is unacceptable, you can't use humans in a situation like this, even if you have the best of intentions," said the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva.

'No big deal'

Others, including the Russian ombudsman for children's rights, Pavel Astakhov, did not seem to see anything cruel or unusual about the actions of the Astrakhan traffic police.

The 14-year-old himself told the Russian news website LifeNews he had not been frightened to take part in the experiment and had enjoyed himself.

"It was cool to check drivers' reactions," he said. "It's not a big deal to lie on a road for a while."

Oleg, a Russian BBC user in Sochi, said the fact that no-one had called emergency services proved that police were right to stage the accident.

"It would be interesting to do the same experiment in other countries to see the difference," he added.

However, another user, Konstantin in Moscow, said that when he had witnessed a similar scene in Moscow, only this time for real, "many drivers stopped and tried to help".

"The ambulance came in 10 minutes together with the police," he said.

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