Polish President and senior government officials die in plane crash

I don't know what else to say. This is absolutely tragic.

They were going to Russia for a ceremony to commemorate a massacre of the Poles, which was really important as Russia had finally apologised for said massacre.

My friend in Poland is devastated. One of the men on the plane, the Undersecretary of State, Mariusz Handzlik, was her lecturer.

ZoZo wrote:

I don't know what else to say. This is absolutely tragic.

Seconded. Too early to know what caused the crash, right?
Hopefully Poland has enough of a stable democracy and government that no one will try to take advantage of the situation.

My suspiscion detector is already working. I hope we don't have grubby terrorists on our hands.

The Unoriginal wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

I don't know what else to say. This is absolutely tragic.

Seconded. Too early to know what caused the crash, right?
Hopefully Poland has enough of a stable democracy and government that no one will try to take advantage of the situation.

Apparently, it was a crappy old plane trying to land in the fog. It missed the runway and hit some trees, and being crappy and old, fell to bits. At least, that's what I gather from the situation. Haven't seen the foil hats come out yet.

ZoZo wrote:

Apparently, it was a crappy old plane trying to land in the fog. It missed the runway and hit some trees, and being crappy and old, fell to bits. At least, that's what I gather from the situation. Haven't seen the foil hats come out yet.

We'll have to wait for a proper investigation to find out the truth, but I'm sure there's going to be plenty of conspiracy theories popping up soon.

This is just so tragic on so many levels. I can't even bring myself to say it in my mind why that is.

I thought at first that it was a small private plane with the president and a few officials, which would be bad enough by itself. This is terrible.

Hitting a tree will pretty much end most planes, though I doubt being a 20-year-old Soviet product helped any. Something that light, traveling at that speed. . . yeah.

If this is some sort of terrorist act, then it means Hideo Kojima has really and truly gone 'round the bend. The amount of setup, planning, and luck you'd need to engineer this kind of accident would be ridiculous.

So, did you hear the one about the Polish airliner that crashed in the cemetery?

They recovered 15,000 bodies

EDIT: Followup: Apparently the plane had been overhauled and should've been in good working condition. Link.

Raine wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

Apparently, it was a crappy old plane trying to land in the fog. It missed the runway and hit some trees, and being crappy and old, fell to bits. At least, that's what I gather from the situation. Haven't seen the foil hats come out yet.

We'll have to wait for a proper investigation to find out the truth, but I'm sure there's going to be plenty of conspiracy theories popping up soon.

Go read the comments section on CNN. Half the folks there think the Russians are responsible (most of the others are cracking jokes about giving Poland President Obama as a replacement).

Spotts1701 wrote:

Go read the comments section on CNN. Half the folks there think the Russians are responsible (most of the others are cracking jokes about giving Poland President Obama as a replacement).

That's messed up.

Haven't the Poles suffered enough?

gaijinguy wrote:

So, did you hear the one about the Polish airliner that crashed in the cemetery?

[size=7]They recovered 15,000 bodies[/size

*snerk* We have that same joke here, except the plane crashed in Dublin in ours :p

ZoZo wrote:

I don't know what else to say. This is absolutely tragic.

They were going to Russia for a ceremony to commemorate a massacre of the Poles, which was really important as Russia had finally apologised for said massacre.

There's a nice little dose of cosmic irony, huh? The passengers were getting ready to mark one horrific moment in Polish history and wound up being part of another. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Wow, that's awful. Hopefully they don't get screwed over with the replacement president and add insult to injury.

gaijinguy wrote:

That's messed up.

Haven't the Poles suffered enough?

I don't know if this was intentional, but it sounded like you were saying this about giving them Obama. It made me laugh.

Chaltab wrote:

Wow, that's awful. Hopefully they don't get screwed over with the replacement president and add insult to injury.

gaijinguy wrote:

That's messed up.

Haven't the Poles suffered enough?

I don't know if this was intentional, but it sounded like you were saying this about giving them Obama. It made me laugh.

That's the joke.

Chaltab wrote:

Wow, that's awful. Hopefully they don't get screwed over with the replacement president and add insult to injury.

Well, the Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament takes over for the short-term, but he has to call for elections within the next 14 days and the election must take place within 60 days of that announcement.

In addition, the President of Poland has very little in the way of domestic authority. Most of the normal day-to-day state functions are carried out by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

Turns out I had seen the crashed "Careless" last September, during a G8 meeting. Not that it means anything, but it was clean as a whistle and the crew was tucking it in for the night. I think that no matter the financial state of a country, the presidential airplane would not be a clunker.
There have been many accidents involving the Tu-154, but few of them were originated by technical troubles (most were shot down, bombed, or flown into the ground or into other planes, such as the Bashkirian airliner full of children which was directed by an air controller to slice open a DHL Boeing). One even skidded across a runway in Greece as the pilots had forgotten to lower the landing gear, but circled and came back to land normally.

Most of the jokes being made in italy right now are along the line of "some guys have all the luck", FWIW.

ZoZo wrote:

I don't know what else to say. This is absolutely tragic.

They were going to Russia for a ceremony to commemorate a massacre of the Poles, which was really important as Russia had finally apologised for said massacre.

My friend in Poland is devastated. One of the men on the plane, the Undersecretary of State, Mariusz Handzlik, was her lecturer.

Coup sense tingling!

If something shady was at play, I wouldn't think that it'd be internal Polish politics, but rather Russia quietly exerting a bit of muscle on Poland, which has been very pro-US for awhile now.

The thing that nobody's saying out loud - because he's, well, dead now - is that there's a good chance the plane tried to land on the President's insistence.

Some time ago, the presidential plane was headed to Tbilisi. The city was under fire, and the pilot flatly refused to land there, choosing a different airport instead. When they came back, Kaczynski said the pilot's refusal was a scandal, because the President (nominally the head of the armed forces) should not have to suffer such insubordination.

Now, as far as I've heard, the plane had four landing attempts in Smolensk. Which kind of suggests there was something wrong in the first place, and they chose to try again in spite of that.

With a little luck, some good may come of this if it brings the countries closer together.

Still, it's terrible, just as they were putting their bad history behind them, they become part of it themselves.

Quote :

Too early to know what caused the crash, right?

Russian SAM.

Or those crappy Russian built runways. Always 50 yards to the left of where you try to land.

ALSO, if we donated Obama to them, wouldn't Biden become our President? Maybe we want to consider giving them Biden and keeping Obama?

I'd say more, but all I can think of are bad jokes and I've made plenty of those already.