While Warsaw continues to be in a profound state of mourning (everyone in our office today was dressed in black, men with black ties, flags everywhere), questions regarding the circumstances of the crash are focused on why a decision to land in such treacherous conditions was taken.
Work on recovering data from the flight data recorders and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) is going ahead smoothly, with the chief prosecutor of the Polish Army, Krzysztof Parulski, describing cooperation with the Russians as 'exemplary'.
Did anyone from the official entourage order, recommend, suggest or politely ask Captain Arkadiusz Protasiuk to make one more attempt to land? There seems to be unity from the Polish media as of this evening that there was no such order or request; the CVR will reveal all. Someone, at the end of the day, took a decision to land. A decision to have flown on to an alternative airport would have saved 96 lives.
I find it quite inconceivable that an RAF pilot flying a Queen's Flight aircraft, or the pilot of Air Force One, would even contemplate such a risky landing.
There is a big cultural gulf when it comes to risk assessment and attitudes to health and safety between Poland and Britain, something that my fellow British-born Poles here in Warsaw are conscious of. Consider the numbers of fatalities in both countries in road accidents (2,538 UK vs 5,437 Poland in 2008). This is despite the fact that there are 31 million cars on the road in the UK, a mere 19 million in Poland. Fatalities on Polish building sites are six times higher per 100,000 man-days than in the UK. Health and Safety may be overzealously policed by Nanny State, but the result is far fewer human tragedies. It is salutary to look at what happened when the Prince of Wales landed the Queen's Flight BAe 146 too fast at Islay airfield in 1994.
"Better safe than sorry"; "more haste, less speed"; "don't keep all your eggs in one basket" - these are things drummed into my head at Oaklands Road Primary School many years ago.
The adage that Polak potrafi ('a Pole can'/'a Pole is able to') is only right 99 times out of a hundred. Consider the case of Polish Olympic medallist Otylia Jędrzejczak. An inexperienced driver, she drove her powerful car into a tree at 160kmh killing her brother. Instead of her remorseful face being used to warn Poles not to drive like lunatics, after her recovery she became the poster girl for drinking milk. "Drink milk, be big" Like me. There's nothing big about driving into a tree at high speed.
Now a personal confession. Last November I had a car crash while driving to Dobra. After four hours at the wheel without a break, as light was fading, with less than half an hour to my destination, my right-hand wheels came off the road and on to a ploughed field. I was unable to get the car back onto the asphalt; I'd have come off OK (I was driving at 70kmh) had it not been for a ditch running perpendicular to the road. My Toyota Yaris was a total write-off, the airbags saved me from anything worse than two stitches above my eyebrow and some bruised ribs. I could have gone on about the lack of rest facilities along the road from Radom to Kraków, the lack of Tiredness kills: take a break signs every few kilometres or the lack of hardened verges on the road between Muchówka and Żegocina. But I don't - it was my own foolish decision to press on to my destination despite everything. My fault.
If there is one Great Big Lesson that should be learned by the Polish nation from this terrible tragedy, it is this. Treat risk seriously. Consider the consequences of impatience and rash decisions. May this be a wake-up call to my countrymen. I shall end this post with my mother's favourite Latin saying (from Ovid), which carries so much wisdom:
Quidquid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem
Whatever you do, do it prudently, and consider the outcome
Cokolwiek czynisz, czyń rozważnie i myśl o wyniku
Someone had blunder'd
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16 comments:
Michael, I can't agree more. However we must realize that 'the nation' cannot learn antything because there's no such a thing as a collective brain. You must get through to every individual moron's head and this can exceed anybody's abilities. When talking to my friends, relatives or students I feel helpless telling them what you suggest. They usually ridicule me for having two stopovers while driving 400 kilometers. The so-called 'Cossack-like' driving style is something that amazed my American friends, who are old drivers themselves and live in the 'car culture'. Polish drivers protest against any safety regulations. It's sick and the problem is that nobody is able to persuade them not to be so reckless.
Do you think it was the nature of risk-taker that led the Tu-154 pilot to landing? Well, it's tempting but I don't think we should compare professional pilots with all those thousands of mad drivers on Polish roads.
Polish pilots - from Żwirko and Wigura via 303 Squadron to the present day have a reputation of bravado and derring-do (regular winners of international flying contests). I see them landing over my house. On clear days, they'll cut corners to get into Okęcie quicker, banking steeply close to the airport. I'm told on the lotnictwo.net forum that this is OK as long as a) you can see the runways and b) you don't wing-over too steeply. Still, I only see LOT pilots do this.
Ah - I do think there is a collective brain. When I think of how attitudes to drink-driving in the UK have changed over the past 25 years... In rural Poland it's still considered all right to get into your car pissed and drive your family home from the festyn parafialny (I've seen it).
Michael,
With all respect - why don't you just take this chance to remain quiet?
Regards,
The 1994 Islay accident report you provide a link for is intriguing, but for quite a different reason.
It's a gem of perspicacity, almost a pleasure to read. I can't imagine a Polish institution producing anything comparable. (I'm currently working my way through yet another utterly dreadful Polish legal text for translation into English; in truth it would best be rewritten from scratch.)
The Smolensk accident report will no doubt drivel on over 100 or more pages, all in a passive, impersonal tone, and the conclusions will be buried somewhere in a haystack of verbosity, without section heads or clear recommendations.
And therein too lies the problem, that no one in Poland seems to have learned the lessons of the CASA accident of 2008. Is there a Polish equivalent I wonder, for the expression "Too many eggs in one basket"? It was my second thought on hearing the news of this heart-rendingly dreadful tragedy.
Nah, it's the tree's fault - it grew in a wrong place.
And the ditch is at fault too ;)
And the forest. Forests should be banned.
There's nothing controversial about this post. Haste kills, period. And death doesn't differentiate between "Citizen no 1" as they put it on TV and citizens no 2, 5 or 1987232.
It is interesting to note - as a follow up to the comments on "collective brain" above - that instead of acknowledging the simple truth, our countrymen rather unanimously seek weirdest explanations of what has happened. It's better to blame Russians, Russian airplanes, "Katyn curse", "Poland's fate" and what not than to face the reality.
If Warsaw is really still in mourning, why haven't I seen it? In my school someone has put up a photo of president and his wife and a wreath. Students and lecturers pass by indifferently, we talk about other issues, nobody mentions the tragedy. Are we afraid? It's still better than feigned mourning. Your office is multicultural. Brits wanted to show their sympathy to Poles, Poles wanted to show their grief.
It's not controversial, actually you'd have to blunder a lot to outrage me. Polish ułańska fantazja and other examples of risky and thoughtless behaviours which are considered awesome will lead to tragedies. As long as eight young people getting into a Maluch outside a disco club on Sunday morning get respect from fellow tanked-up "clubbers", chances that something can change are negligible. The festyn parafialny case is very true - social consest for drunk driving is appaling.
With all respect - why don't you just take this chance to remain quiet?
Michael, I'm glad you took this chance and had guts not to keep your mouth shut. Passing over some facts won't solve any problems, speaking about them, even if it's unpopular or painful might be a step forward. Does it hurt? It should hurt.
Good that you mentioned the accident and that you came safe and sound - it's much better to learn from someone else's mistakes. Poor good reliable car...
Otylia - nice example, I have a more striking one - Mr Zientarski (father) who had his part in a social campaign prędkość zabija. He must have been very credible. Why didn't he tell it to his son who had killed another man a few months earlier, when he had crashed into a prop of a flyover next to Wyscigi?
And slow driving can pay off - on Easter Sunday I drove at steady speed of 60 kmph down ul. Pulawska from Rzymowskiego to Mysiadlo and I didn't have to stop on any traffic lights - I saved fuel (car computer showed current consumption of mere 4,5 litres per 100 km), energy, environment, car.
A colleague who lives in Poland and flies weekly to London to work informs me that one can tell when the Wizzair flight has a Polish pilot. If there is fog at Katowice on the way here, the pilot runs up the engines to disperse it a bit then executes a rushed take off. On the way back, he tries to get down when BA and others divert. But greater risk = more chance of a crash.
It reminds me of a cab ride on a PKP Ty-2 steam locomotive in 1991. The driver wanted to show me how fast it would go. We exceeded 100km/hr on a line so overgrown that the rails were obscured, rolling so badly that water slopped out of the tender. But it was OK because a) he proved his point; and b) we scared the occupants of a German car on a level crossing.
In the Battle of Britain, Polish airmen inflicted the greatest casualties per pilot on the Nazi enemy, and suffered the greatest percentage losses. We should never forget the contribution to freedom of Polish courage and sacrifice. That reckless bravery has its place in war, but not so much in peacetime.
WHP - your experience on the Ty2 is very revealing (incidentally, my favourite steam engine of all time). I'd question the Battle of Britain losses of Polish pilots. I researched this some years ago and concluded that Polish pilots' survival rate was actually very high - because these guys (unlike most RAF pilots) had seen combat over Poland and France. Agree however military and civilian aviation have entirely different raisons d'etre.
Bartek - Ułańska fantazja - right on. 'Discretion is the better part of valour' - a useful English saying. How many cars soar through lights on Puławska as they change from amber to red? Unthinkable in England.
Mourning - the MiniEuropa delimarket round the corner from our office is playing Chopin instead of disco-polo and hip-hop; there are flags in every fourth window in the flats along Górnośląska and Koźmińska, people are still sombre. You can feel it.
WHP - your experience on the Ty2 is very revealing (incidentally, my favourite steam engine of all time). I'd question the Battle of Britain losses of Polish pilots. I researched this some years ago and concluded that Polish pilots' survival rate was actually very high - because these guys (unlike most RAF pilots) had seen combat over Poland and France. Agree however military and civilian aviation have entirely different raisons d'etre.
Bartek - Ułańska fantazja - right on. 'Discretion is the better part of valour' - a useful English saying. How many cars soar through lights on Puławska as they change from amber to red? Unthinkable in England.
Mourning - the MiniEuropa delimarket round the corner from our office is playing Chopin instead of disco-polo and hip-hop; there are flags in every fourth window in the flats along Górnośląska and Koźmińska, people are still sombre. You can feel it.
Sometimes it's better to accelerate when the light is about to turn red. Abrupt braking can mean risk being rear-ended. Everything depends on the speed and distance from traffic lights. Though in general I know it shouldn't be done. The cause of many accidents is that people take for granted that nothing bad can happen to them - "it happens to others, not me" is a common way of thinking.
Adn controversially - nothing can steer you right foot better on accelerator pedal than a sight of scattered parts of human bodies at a scene of an accident. Once you see it and it haunts, but oddly enough only in situations when you are tempted to put your foot down.
All,
I am not against addressing your concern re. safety issues, missing ability to think forward etc.
I have a friend whose wife is a flight controller at Okecie. And both flying and ground personnel are pissed off with all that junk theories about what caused the crash, that journalists tell us in the media.
Just wait until next Monday. And until real professionals, not the couch potato experts, challenge all facts and findings.
Best regards,
Not tho' the soldier knew…
(Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, in case nobody else got it)
But how can you say "Health and Safety may be overzealously policed by Nanny State" in the same context? It's a black-and-white choice. You either have a system in which individuals and institutions can be held accountable through the courts for failing to take all reasonable precautions, or you don't.
If you do, individuals and institutions are compelled to act in a way that will ensure they don't get hammered by settlements via an unsympathetic jury (you've got to prepare for the worst), which means 'may contain nuts' labels on packets of peanuts and getting everybody off the plane if the pilot sneezes.
The alternative is the Polish system, which gives the vast majority the opportunity to do what they like when they like and the tiny minority the opportunity to get mown down at pedestrian crossings.
As with all things in life, it's a question of balance. In the UK, the balance has tipped beyond what's considered common sense. Here, I worry every morning that my children will make it across ul. Karczunkowska to the bus stop (no zebra crossing, no Belisha Beacons, bless them!), impatient drivers racing to get one car ahead before the lights on Puławska.
Michael: It was a very exciting ride on the footplate of that Ty-2. They were good machines.
I concede your point about Battle of Britain losses. Quote from Wikipedia:
"Although there continues to be a perception that the "fanatical" Polish pilots, inspired by hatred, were prepared to ram German aircraft during the Battle, this is not accurate. Combat experience taught the Poles that the quickest and most efficient way to destroy an enemy aircraft was to open fire from close range:
After firing a brief opening burst at 150 to 200 yards, just to get on the enemy's nerves, the Poles would close almost to point-blank range. That was where they did their real work. "When they go tearing into enemy bombers and fighters they get so close you would think they were going to collide," observed Athol Forbes.
The Poles, with their don't-fire-till-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes tactics were often accused of recklessness, but this was unfair. The Kościuszki Squadron's death rate was actually almost 70 percent lower than the rate for other RAF squadrons during the battle".
As a Polish speaker from having done business there, my grandfather biletted Polish servicemen during WW2 and had the greatest admiration for them. He used to wonder what had become of those men.
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