WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Black box recordings from the Polish jetliner that crashed in April, killing Poland’s President, confirm that the pilots decided to land in heavy fog despite control tower warnings.
Polish authorities released a transcript of the last 39 minutes of the flight that ended in a crash outside the western Russian city of Smolensk.
It also reveals that the plane’s warning system told pilots in the two minutes before the crash that terrain was ahead and urged them repeatedly to “pull up” – a warming the pilots did not heed until it was too late.
The plane’s wing clipped a tree, causing it to flip and crash. The recording ends with the pilots screaming and cursing.
Polish and Russian investigators have not yet drawn final conclusions about what caused the crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others. But the evidence has so far pointed to pilot error and bad weather conditions and the black box recordings seem to further support that theory.
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