This is the type of plane the Poland President rode in: TU-154 Ya, IIRC Airforce 1 and 2 are both Boeing 747's.
they were saying on the news that polish president had a history of trying to override his pilot's decisions
Should have had more concern, considering that the country's top leaders were on board... However, you can't blame him I guess... I mean... what are the chances that this could happen? Slim, but it happened, nonetheless.
if life and death decisions were at stake... and they absolutely had to be made at another part of the world... of course you can't... barring this and similar situations... I don't see how you can't...
Unbelievable. The worst part of this is how completely and totally avoidable this situation was. I'm an aviation nerd that's very much familiar with air traffic control and general do's/dont's of piloting. According to what I'm reading, red flag #1 should have been the plane's incompatibility with the ILS type landing system the airport reportedly had (basically, a system that provides precision guidance for landings in situations exactly like this) coupled with the language barrier of Polish pilots being unable to completely understand Russian. Between that, the extremely unfavorable landing conditions and their likely understanding that Russian ATC wanted them to land elsewhere -- the pilots simply shouldn't have tried to do what they did. While I have no doubt the Polish delegation may have pressured them to land as planned, that's clearly still no excuse.
