Pilot warned he was to close to the ground by GPWS system

The pilot of the Tupolev plane that crashed in Smolensk two weeks ago was alerted by a safety device  at 500 feet (152 metres) that he was flying too low and that he needed to pull up, it has emerged.

An analysis of the voice recorder shows that the Ground Proximity Warning System, GPWS, alerted the pilots about 30 seconds before the crash that he was flying too low, telling him to pull up several times.

It is not clear why the pilot failed to react to the warnings from the GPWS system that were issued periodically for a 30 second period or so before the crash took place.

It has been speculated that the pilot was confused by fog and by landing beacons placed in wrong positions.

In addition,  a huge Russian military transport plane, an  IL-76, could have been flying in front of the Tupolev and forced the plane to fly lower to avoid a collision. Air turbulence from the IL-76 plane would have pushed the Tupolev even lower and into a collision with the trees. 

There is a fifteen minute gap between when the Tupolev plane actually crashed and when the plane crashed according to official accounts.

In a separate development, the Polish military prosecutor’s office has said that the video shot in the immediate aftermath of the crash and with four gunshots appears to be authentic but has been compressed for uploading on youtube and so needs further investigation.

The video shows fog thickening from “minute to minute”, said officials, according to media sources.  

Andrei Mendierej, who shot the video that appears to show surviving crew being shot, was stabbed shortly after the video was released on the internet, and died after his respirator was unplugged in a Kiev hospital.

Also, Polskaweb reports that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has put on ice plans to seal a huge gas deal.

Tusk and Putin were expected to sign the deal as early as next week.

http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=121042