On April 11, Major (ret.) Arkadiusz Szczęsny appeared once again as a guest on Jana Piński’s YouTube program to summarize all the knowledge he had gathered about the Smolensk disaster, its causes and the people responsible for it.
The major gave an extensive answer to the question of why the government aircraft took off on the morning of April 10, 2010, and then crashed in Smolensk. To explain this, he went back in time to two other incidents.
The first took place on August 12, 2008, in Georgia, when Lech Kaczyński wanted his aircraft to land in Tbilisi, but the pilot refused for safety reasons. Major Grzegorz Pietruczuk, who refused to land in Tbilisi for Lech Kaczyński, was publicly humiliated by Kaczyński.
“Major Arkadiusz Protasiuk, who was the Tupolev’s pilot in 2010, was watching this humiliation and pressure as the second pilot,” explained Major Arkadiusz Szczęsny. “He saw how the crew commander who refused to carry out the president’s order was treated. Lech Kaczyński gave an interview in which he said that anyone who decides to become an officer cannot be timid,” the major added.
According to Szczęsny, the second important event was the Bryza aircraft crash in Gdynia–Babie Doły in March 2009, in which a four-person crew died. It led to the development of guidelines for instructional flights, which were signed by General Błasik and assigned to his subordinates.
“The Georgian incident was a prelude to the Smolensk disaster,” Arkadiusz Szczęsny said on Piński’s program. “That was when the president, ministers of the Prime Minister’s Chancellery and air force officers seriously violated the law. There should never be a situation in which a crew commander is pressured by officers to break regulations. On April 10, 2010, General Andrzej Błasik used the guidelines for instructional flights created after the Bryza crash, which allowed command of the crew to be taken over in the air and decisions to be made on behalf of the crew by a person appointed by the air force commander. These guidelines fulfilled the expectations of President Lech Kaczyński and people associated with the president. The only aim was to use them in a situation in which the president would be unable to decide what was happening on board. On April 10, 2010, General Andrzej Błasik used these guidelines because no one in the crew had been trained for minimum weather conditions,” the expert claimed.
Major Arkadiusz Szczęsny accuses the civilian members of the experts on the Miller Commission of not making enough effort to understand military aviation regulations.
“The Miller Commission identifies the causes of the disaster but does not connect the facts,” the military officer said. “The pilots on the commission were people who had been responsible for safety for many years and were acting in their own matter on that commission. An untrained crew had no right to land in Smolensk; the air force commander took command in order to conduct a training flight with the crew, and that is the crux of the matter. General Błasik took command even though he was sitting in the ‘lounge’ and having a drink. Officially, he was in command of that aircraft. Those boys—the pilots—were not authorized to conduct that flight and had no idea about it. Błasik knew that system and procedure exactly. The Russians issued a weather report 15 minutes before takeoff stating that the conditions were minimal. The crew should have confirmed this and issued an official statement that it held the qualifications to fly in such conditions. That document was falsified because the crew did not have those qualifications. The falsified statement was sent to the Russians, which is why the flight from Warsaw was permitted and Smolensk promised to accept it. Before landing, the pilots were terrified that the weather was so bad. The cockpit recording reveals the young pilots discussing that they were afraid to land in such conditions. The recording also captures the moment when, during General Błasik’s first visit to the cockpit, the crew sensed alcohol on Andrzej and said that he was ‘digging his own grave’ and that ‘we are covering a long stretch, and he was drinking.’ Andrzej was my contemporary from school in Dęblin, and I know that he did not abstain from drinking on trips. Błasik’s perception was impaired enough that, because he was drunk, he treated the landing lightly,” the military officer added.
Major Szczęsny chose the truth about the Smolensk disaster.
“For me, the young pilots forced to land matter more than one president and one general decorated with badges who acted to the detriment of safety. The choice is simple for me: I choose the truth. The disaster was neither an accident nor a coincidence of unfortunate circumstances. There is a group of officers who do not want to reveal the massive pathologies in military aviation, and the scale of those pathologies was enormous. It was a ready-made recipe for the disaster that occurred,” Major Arkadiusz Szczęsny concluded.
The full conversation can be heard on Jana Piński’s channel.