"Don't blame the pilot" plead parents

16th April 2010

© Mulag Captain Protasiuka was in charge of the aircraft Share:

The parents of the pilot in charge of flying the Presidential plane have begged the world not to blame their son for the crash.

“I do not believe that it was his fault, and I ask people not to lay the blame on him” says the mother of 36 year-old Captain Arkadiusz Protasiuka.

It has been suggested that the language barrier played a role in the crash. But this theory has been brushed aside by the pilot’s father who claims that his son’s knowledge of the Russian language would have eradicated any chance of a potential communication breakdown.

“He spoke Russian very well. On April 7th, on a plane with Donald Tusk, he was responsible for all direct contact with the Russian flight controller,” he says.

However, it has now been established that air traffic control at the airport repeatedly told the pilot not to land due to bad weather conditions.

“The pilot was advised to fly to Moscow or Minsk because of heavy fog, but he still decided to land. No one should have been landing in that fog,” one Russian officer told Reuters anonymously.

Despite the numerous theories and his parents’ pleas to the public, the two black boxes which were recovered from the flight have made it clear that the crash was the result of the pilot’s failing.

The two black boxes recovered from the wreckage have revealed that the crew only realised their fate seconds before the crash.

One member of the investigation team stated that a ‘dramatic’ speech took place on the flight desk, just moments before the plane crashed.

“On the basis of the data in the possession of prosecutors one could say that the crew was aware of the inevitability of the coming catastrophe,” said Andrzej Seremet, Poland’s chief prosecutor.

Whether there was any interference from any of the passengers, or more specifically Lech Kaczynski who was sat directly behind the cockpit, is still unknown.

This seems likely, taking into account Kaczynski’s track record for interfering. One pilot was awarded the Silver Cross of Merit by Defence Minister Bogdan Klich, for refusing to obey the late president’s orders to change the destination of a flight to Tbilisi to support the Georgian leadership during the war in 2008 - stating that it was safer to stick to the original plan.