Speculation has turned to pressure from the president after technical problems were ruled out.

Airport news for Flights on 12/04/2010.

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Stunned by the greatest tragedy to hit the country since World War II, Poles lined the streets of the capital in their thousands to greet the body of president Lech Kazynski. His corpse had returned from Russia, where he died in a plane crash that also took the lives of many senior members of the country’s political and military communities.

Meanwhile, investigators in Russia were beginning the arduous task of trying to discover what led the 26-year-old Tupolov 154 to crash while attempting to land in heavy fog.

Based on recordings of the last conversations between the pilot and air-traffic controllers, investigators concluded the aircraft suffered no technical problem, said Alexander Bastryskin, head of the Russian prosecutor’s office.

The delegation was heading for a memorial service for the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. Given the president’s reputation for pressuring pilots to go against their judgement, some are questioning if pressure on the pilot from the president’s entourage might have led to the accident.

In an incident that led to a famous court case, after his pilot deemed the Georgian capital’s airport too dangerous, Lech Kazynski entered the cockpit in a bid to change the pilot’s mind.

In this case, severe weather had led air-traffic controllers to order the pilot to divert to Minsk or Moscow. The crash that followed left 96 people dead.

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