Air safety: Costly errors
Pilot error, improper flight organization and poor weather conditions were highlighted as the main causes of the military plane crash in January, which resulted in the deaths of all 20 passengers and crew, according to a report released by the investigating commission last week.
The numerous mistakes were mainly caused by failures in the management and training of the Polish Air Force, according to the commission. The EADS CASA C-295 M plane, which crashed during landing, was flying too high, the pilots were not using the ESR landing guidance system, and the air traffic controller gave inappropriate direction to the plane, said the head of the commission, Colonel Zbigniew Drozdowski. In addition, the head of the flight crew and the air traffic controller lacked experience with this type of a plane.
The commission made it clear that technical factors had not contributed to the accident. "All the systems on the plane and at the airport were working," Drozdowski said.
The revelation will result in several dismissals from the Polish Air Force, the Minister of National Defence, Bohdan Klich, announced last week. "Research into the CASA crash has revealed the scale of carelessness in the Polish Air Force," he commented.
The report will speed up the military prosecutor's investigation, too, experts expected. "The conclusions of the report coincide with the scenarios we assumed in the investigation," the head of the Military Prosecutor's Office in Poznań, Tadeusz Ciela, told Rzeczpospolita daily.
The plane was carrying Air Force officers returning from a conference on air safety when it crashed. It had taken off from Warsaw and the Mirosławiec military airport, where the accident happened, was one of its final stops. The plane was on its second landing approach when it suddenly plummeted 100-150 meters, crashing 800 meters away from the runaway. None of the passengers, including 16 officers and four crew members, survived. A monument commemorating the crash was unveiled in Mirosławiec last month.
