How the Miller’s Commission wrongly accused and denigrated the TU-154M Pilot-in-Command (PIC), Major Arkadiusz Protasiuk

Written by Marek Dabrowski

SCND: January 30, 2016

The Miller’s Commission alleged in its final report on the crash of the Tu 154M in Smolensk, that Major Arkadiusz Protasiuk, who served as pilot- in-command of the fatal flight PLF101 on April 10, 2010 to Smolensk, violated seven times the landing minima for the aircraft Tu-154M between 2008-2009. The KBWLLP report on page 115 states:

In seven cases, minimum conditions during landings were below the limits for the type of approach or the airports (11.02.2008, 11.05.2008, 18.12.2008, 09.01.2009, 29.06.2009, 11.09.2009, and 10.11.2009).

The Miller’s Commission listed landings in Warsaw, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Krakow and Ljubljana in 2008-2009. In this study, we verified this opinion, based on the available documentation. We determined that even a mere suspicion of violating the minima on each of these airports should trigger formal notifications in each case by the relevant departments of Civil Aviation and the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Defense responsible for aviation safety. The notification should classify the event as an incident which had to be investigated, and in the case of confirmation of violations should follow with and criminal and disciplinary actions against the pilot, with the possibility of pilot license suspension.

The existence of such communications would provide independent confirmation of Miller’s Commission allegations and conclusions. However, neither the Civil Aviation Authority, nor the Inspectorate of the Ministry of Defense for Aviation Safety had issued any official notifications alleging possibility of landing below the minimum conditions by Major Protasiuk in the years of 2008-2010. There are also no documents coming from ISAF or from any Afghanistan destination airports, where 36 Squadron flew in military missions.  Although the Afghanistan flights are beyond the scope of this analysis, all domestic and foreign available information has confirmed that safety rules were never violated by Major Arkadiusz Protasiuk.

Therefore, it should be stated that the findings concerning the alleged violations of minimum conditions by the pilot-in-command, as described in the Miller’s Report are untrue and demonstrate that Miller Commission has selectively used available source materials, and their interpretation is biased.

The biased nature of the Miller’s Report is also demonstrated by the fact that after accusing the pilot of repeated violations of minimum conditions, the Miller Commission does not offer any recommendations to eliminate possible irregularities and safety violations by the operators of airport facilities in Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk and Wroclaw where these violations were supposed to occur.  A formal notification should have been issued to those operators as a consequence of violating pilot safety rules. The Miller’s Commission should list in their report the errors and instances of neglecting to address such violations by the civil and military security authorities at specific airports, and punish such lack of reaction for the alleged widespread violations of the flight safety rules by those operators. The omission of this important safety measure by the Miller’s Commission clearly shows that the analyzed here allegations made by the Miller’s Commission against the pilot-in-command were not substantiated by evidence and merely served as pure propaganda. They are also entirely untrue.

The entire analysis by M. Dabrowski can be found here

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