Originally by: Merin Ryskin

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Oh FFS, enough with the tinfoil hattery. Russia had nothing to do with this, it was 100% pilot error.


IFR Approaches 101, for the non-pilot: instrument approaches have a minimum safe altitude. You do NOT descend below this altitude unless you can see the runway, because below it you are no longer guaranteed to be clear of obstacles on the ground. You might get lucky sometimes (since the minimum altitude does have a margin of error), but it's ****ing stupid and often ends in a smoking crater off the end of the runway.

This altitude depends on the type of IFR approaches. ILS approaches can have fairly low minimum safe altitudes (even allowing the autopilot to fly the plane all the way to the ground, at a properly-equipped airport) because the ILS gives you vertical guidance. Non-ILS approaches only give you horizontal guidance, so the minimum safe altitude is set well above the surface. IOW, a non-ILS approach can get you through the clouds and down to a point where you break out of the clouds and can see the runway, but it doesn't get you all the way there.


Now, here's the important thing: the airport in question did not have an ILS approach, which means that the pilot should not have been anywhere near the ground without the runway visible out the window. There is nothing the Russians could have done to cause him to crash.

What we have in this case is a textbook screwup by the pilot that is far too common:


1) Pilot flies the instrument approach down to the minimum safe altitude, but doesn't see the runway yet.

2) Pilot for some reason (perhaps his passengers really want to get to their political event on time) decides that he MUST land there, and continues to descend instead of aborting the approach and diverting to an alternate airport.

3) Pilot discovers why the minimum safe altitude exists, and maybe has just enough time to scream "OH ****" as the crash site finally becomes visible out the window.


The fact that the pilot not only refused the suggestion of alternate airports before landing, but made multiple attempts to fly the same approach instead of diverting after the first failure is a pretty strong suggestion that this is exactly what happened.


Unless the pilot was a Russian suicide agent (and in that case, it's just as "reasonable" to think that the pilot was a Polish suicide agent trying to create anger at Russia), this was nothing more than a ****ing idiot killing himself and all of his passengers.

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