REPORT: POLISH PLANE DUMPED FUEL BEFORE CRASH

There is tacit sentiment out there that no one should jump to conclusions when it comes to what caused the Polish airliner carrying Polish president Lech Kaczynski and nearly one hundred top officials, to crash in Smolensk, Russia. I agree with that. That also should go for the conclusion that it was pilot error, weather, or anything else.

In reading a report from the Times Online, two new facts seem to jump out. The first is a report that the plane carrying Kacynski was dumping fuel prior to attempting to land. This almost necessarily indicates a mechanical problem:

Russia Today and other television stations reported that even before the first attempt to land, the pilot had been dumping fuel — indicating some form of mechanical problem — so by the fourth attempt there was no alternative but to put the aircraft down.

If true, this could likely mean that weather - heavy fog - was not the sole cause of the crash.

Another part of the report seems to provide a possible reason for why the pilot would ignore Air Traffic Control (ATC) after being repeatedly told to divert to Moscow or Minsk:

Kaczynski, whose body was also said to have been found, was a former anti-communist campaigner with a penchant for taunting the Kremlin. He had every reason to believe he was not welcome in Russia. Polish observers said he may have interpreted an order to divert to Moscow as an attempt to sabotage his big day in Katyn, where he was due to attend a mass and give a speech.

Russian media reports said he had once become angry with a pilot who refused to land in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, on the grounds that it was unsafe. The same thing may have happened at Smolensk, aviation experts claimed. They suggested he may have pressed the pilot to make at least two attempts to land.

There is every reason to believe that relations between Putin and Kacynski were tense and strained before the crash:

Kaczynski was not invited to Putin’s event and there was no promise of a warm welcome at the Smolensk airfield yesterday. He was determined to attend the commemoration, though — not, as he put it, “to inflame relations with Russia”, but to support 400 relatives of the victims who were expected to be there. “I hope I get a visa,” he had joked.

Kacynski also backed Georgia in 2008 when Russia invaded:

Kaczynski had angered the Kremlin by siding with Georgia in its brief war with Russia in 2008. Tensions between the two countries grew when Poland agreed to host an American missile defence system. Relations have remained frosty despite Obama’s decision to opt for a simpler version of the system.

Think of the odds. In 1940, over 20,000 Polish officials were gunned down by Stalin's Secret Police (early KGB). Then, in 2010 - 70 years later - the Polish president and several top officials go down in a plane crash en route to commemorating the atrocity. As if that weren't enough to raise skepticism, this isn't the first time a plane carrying people headed to Russia for the purpose of the Katyn massacres went down:

Some Poles saw a connection between Kaczynski’s death and that of Wladyslaw Sikorski, a leader killed in a mysterious plane crash in Gibraltar in 1943 just as he had started delving into events at Katyn.

As I posted more extensively here, Andrew Osborn wrote in the Independent that there are 20 journalists who have mysteriously lost their lives under Putin's reign. One of them - Artyom Borovik - died in a plane crash:

Senior executive at investigative magazine 'Completely Secret' that exposed the misdeeds of the rich and powerful. Died on 3 March 2000 in a plane crash that the authorities believe may not have been accidental.

For the record, I am 100% on board with not jumping to conclusions. The same should go for those who are already willing to disregard foul play.

Link to Times Online piece.