Polish pilot hailed as a hero after emergency landing

THE Polish pilot hailed as a hero for his smooth emergency landing of a Boeing airliner remained modest yesterday in his first public appearance, saying he felt “huge relief” once his passengers evacuated the plane, but wondered whether he could have done better.

Capt Tadeusz Wrona landed the plane on its belly at Warsaw international airport after its landing gear failed, gaining instant hero status in Poland.

“When I stopped on the runway, I still was not sure that everyone was safe because smoke and some burning from friction appeared on the ground,” Wrona told reporters at a news conference. “I felt huge relief when the head flight attendant reported that the plane was empty.”

Passengers on board the plane described Tuesday’s landing as so smooth they thought they had landed on wheels. However, sparks, smoke and small fires under the plane erupted on landing, and emergency workers immediately doused the plane with water.

When one reporter asked him about the exceptional landing, Wrona joked that he heard a passenger complain from the back about feeling a bump.

Several Facebook pages sprang up immediately to express admiration for Wrona, with some calling him a “superhero”.

“Fly like an eagle and land like a crow,” runs one phrase coined by fans on Facebook, a play on the word “wrona,” which in Polish means crow.

Meanwhile, a Russian jet crash last month that killed 44 people, including an entire professional ice hockey team, was caused by pilots inadvertently putting on the brakes during takeoff, investigators said yesterday, blaming poor crew training and lax oversight.

The Interstate Aviation Committee said the September 7 crash of the Yak-42 plane near the city of Yaroslavl in central Russia occurred because one of the pilots accidentally activated the brakes during takeoff and then pulled the plane up too sharply in a desperate attempt to take off.

It was one of the worst aviation disasters ever in sports, shocking Russia and the world of hockey, as the dead included 36 players, coaches and staff of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team. The only player who survived the crash later died of burns.

A flight engineer was the sole survivor of the crash.

Alexei Morozov, who led the investigation, said the crew still had enough time to abort the takeoff safely at the moment when they realised that it had gone wrong.

He blamed the plane’s owner, Yak-Service, for failing to observe safety standards and adequately train the crew. The company was closed in September by Russia’s federal aviation authority following a check that found severe violations.

Morozov said that both pilots had flown another type of plane with a slightly different cockpit layout and apparently had never learned the correct position for their feet on takeoff.